Imagine this you drive a train with your friends how cool would that be but also this would add private and public lobby's more roles like: dispatcher, signaller and more also can have issues with signaling,failures, broken track and more
I'd say like a simrail multiplayer would be cool. unsure how they handle that though so it will take years for DTG to develop that. even though it's a cool idea. it would not work with free roam. non 24h looping timetables. and the shortness of routes. I would love to have a dispatcher function ingame and sit at a station dispatching trains. but even that would be really difficult and need a rewrite of the current dispatcher. you won't really see ur friends driving by either. just once on the route. unless there will be some "service timetable" where you drive somewhere and take back another train instead of being kicked to the main menu and having to go through 4 sub pages to get to the next service. Although I'd love to see it, Simrail is doing it already and the current state is very incompatible for multiplayer.
The only issue here is that these things wouldn’t just require a multiplayer integration. For example things such as dispatch mode and signalling I expect would require a major rebuild in the way the game actually operates for it to be functional at an appropriate level. I still stand by my initial opinion though that I just don’t think multiplayer would work for TSW, and I think DTG’s time would be better spent bringing new routes to the game and fixing bugs, and I think there are several others who agree. Multiplayer for TSW was once possibly one of the highest requested things, and appears to have significantly decreased over the years
Very bad idea, this game needs other things done and not wasting developing time on Multiplayer mode. Imagine one thing. Multiplayer on German route, where one ”unexperienced” train driver don’t know how to operate with PZB rules and giving penalty brakes all the time, and blocking entire route for other players who can’t pass through blocked section. Sounds frustrating, right? Developing MP experience and ratingn systems would take years of work, just like optimizing crossplatform MP, which is a big thing for even bigger titles. Fix: Roleplay AI trains are you fella coplayers just without their name above cab! You can wawe at them and talk to them via radio. And people on platforms are your neighbors or something.
Doesn’t really mean anything though. At the time, multiplayer was something a lot of people wanted, and at the time, they could very well have been actively working on some kind of multiplayer feature. But things change.
In my world, "Definitely" does have a definite meaning. So there's people you can take by their word and people you shouldn't be trusting. But then, there's SimRail for a true MP experience.
I understand that, however that was 7 years ago. At that point, multiplayer could have been and probably was an important addition to DTG’s plans for TSW. However over time things can change, priorities can change, perhaps there were issues or major game breaking bugs in their attempt at developing a multiplayer feature causing it to be withdrawn
DTG Game Coding couldn't handle MP their game in general can't even handle itself without crashing or having Millions of bugs glitches in it, MP would be a nightmare experience online. MP will never come to TSW, Just go play Simrail on PC which already has MP in it and works 100 times better. 3rd party Searchlight Studios has been building the first American Route for Simrail which will be releasing sometime in 2026 located on the Red Deer branch line near outskirts of Chicago, most known info is the line will be 281miles of trackage with 2 Major Yards and come with AC4400-CW and SD70ACu CP branded Locomotives, be on the lookout for this!
Definitely be cool with a 4 to 12 player servers , besides there can be rolls like engineer conductor or just passenger, not only that with the creator club option I’m pretty sure it’s possible.
it's possible and cool. but would need a complete rewrite of how the menu's and game works. it is set up for doing a single service you want and then go back to the menu and choose a new one. the only continuation you have is the continue on foot that usually bugs keeping on your train because give up yourney only shows up if you are actually still playing the service. and then you can go pick another train to drive. to get a mixed server of people, and add in the extra jobs people want like conductor or stuff will take time. plus the syncing of DLC is gonna be difficult because not everyone can see each others layers. and if any dispatcher or red signal issue happens the whole server is toast.
Not possible when DTG caters to Console players more, if you were lucky enough to be around playing TSW when it first released in 2017 Console players weren't a thing at all, the game didn't even have them as players and the game was an exclusive PC only game at the time, ever since DTG took on Console players the graphics and detail all took a nosedive into the deep end of the pool which that is 100% accurate as going back and replay TSW you'll see all the detail and how everything runs so much better. It's many of the reasons why nothing truly works right as they have to deal with PC players and 2 different Consoles trying to make them as one work. TSW almost everything worked and ran great with high detail and better graphics, more trains were running on a map all while playing the game, Dead honest! One of the many reasons why MP would never work in TSW now is because the Consoles wouldn't even be able to handle it coming from the mouth of Matt Peddlesden when TSW2 was releasing at the time on the X-Box the third version of TSW the PS4 joined the scene, and everything started to go downhill a lot.
It would be really cool to have a multiplayer, but I‘m afraid how well this game can handle performance
Really quite opposed to MP in a train game. I mean I've used SimRail occasionally but you tend to end up driving the same stretch of track over and over depending on who else is on and maybe don't even get your choice of train. At first there was a social aspect to it but I see with the latest update the devs have clamped down on idle chit chat and insist on essential comms only. Run 8 MP was even worse, kind of a good ol' boys clique who blanked my attempts to be sociable and had deleted my train when I came back to pick it up later. And MP also comes with a cost of maintaining the server(s) involved.
Simrail will get better as Searchlight Studio's has been working on the first American Route known as the Red Deer sub located in Illinois and ran by CP Candian Pacific Railroad, units that will be ingame are the AC4400 and SD70ACu total of 327 miles, so there is at least some Hope at the end of the Tunnel
Well still not much use in the single player game without some means of saving progress on a route that may take 6 or 7 hours to run from one end to the other. Or the hassle of trying to find an available train that allows you to do it in bitesize consecutive chunks in MP.
Just have to wait and see what's what, it may be really good then again could be bad, but one thing is for sure is there will be an American Route which is still something Good No matter how it runs as updates will make things better over time. knowing anything about Searchlight should tell you it will be a really good product.
I think it'll be something similar to the announcements that they're working on a core system for it but it's still a way off.
