Enough Is Enough!!!

I just like how JD's post about the weekend's activities refered to content coming to 'Train Sim World', whereas every other piece of official comms we've got about new routes has said 'Train Sim World 4', is JD saying we're getting a new core game?

 

Sadly the majority of the beta team who abide by the NDA and maintain their integrity suffering the actions of one or two idiots is a real shame. Both in terms of the efforts they make on our behalf and the future of testing.

Would be interesting if that changes how they approach testing, but with something as diverse as a railway simulator some sort of external beta over a cross section of users many with real railway experience is pretty much essential to a quality product. Maybe they will just recruit new testers, this time vetting a bit more carefully to weed out those who just want to play the title free a couple of months before release and incapable of keeping their gobs shut.

 

I think as a whole we suspect TSW5. Personally I’d rather see a new bundle & stick to TSW 4, so DTG can actually finish adding what they promised to it, along with improving existing features & not being able to keep up.

 

Beta team depends now on how quickly the mole can be caught - and I am sure they've left digital traces somewhere. Maybe they are man enough to reveal themselves.

I think Beta team will come back, probably with much stricter NDAs declaring more severe measures against contract breaches - who knows what else could be leaked. It doesn't matter if it's "only" screenshots or people are now looking forward to WCML - trust must not be abused.

As for the testing, the whole forum is still a Beta testing team anyway, discovering many bugs five minutes after playing a new release.

 

THIS!

 

I've only been playing for around 4 months, but is there some history to why DTG don't announce what the routes are when they say there is a new route coming. It seems bizarre to me, especially as someone who runs a business and one of the first things I was told and advised was "be open and honest, upfront and let people know what is going on - that way you'll often head off any issues or complaints". It seems DTG operate on the polar opposite of this.

I understand with third party routes, as things can get heavily delayed or even disappear. But first party routes? I can even get the core summer bundle, keep it under wraps and do a big announcement. But for other routes and DLC. I really don't get sticking "UK route" on a roadmap 6 months out, saying you can't say what it is, repeating this for 6 months then finally saying something 2 weeks before release. Why not for example, January you announce a new UK route and say what is it and that is is coming Summer. Then spend 6 months dropping a few teasers and WIP screenshots and building excitement for what it actually is rather than everyone deciding in their head it is the route they want and convincing themselves of that fact, then getting annoyed when it isn't said route they've convinced themselves it will be.

 

Indeed, that's a unique DTG thing it seems. Afraid to announce TSW5 or upcoming stuff - but there's a history of failures and broken promises preceding the decision.

SCS Software (ATS/ETS2) do announce their projects far ahead, and people know what's to come, there's no secrecy. They only leave the release date open, and it's released when it's done, usually only needing minor patches, mostly none at all.

 

I know in the thread that must not now be mentioned someone referred to water marking, but that's probably more to trace if pre release copies of the game turn up on warez or file sharing sites.

Think Dresden to Riesa might have fallen foul of an early announcement, then the scope of the route was curtailed leading to a bit of disappointment. However at this stage you are probably quite correct that work is advanced enough the project would not be binned, certainly not to the point they couldn't say, "Well yes, we're bringing you part of the route formerly known as the LNWR Premier Line, but full details of the extent and the included traction and rolling stock will be briefed out in due course." In fact they could announce something to that effect now and make a lot of people very happy.

 

Makes me think that some licencing may have to be finalised or indeed the scope is still not 100% defined. The announcement of an announcement is something that doesn't sit to well with me. Not sure exactly why but all the forum chatter will carry on regardless unless every thread gets shut down. Bachmann in the model world have started announcements with fairly short notice and in once case with the retooled 37 it was out the same day if I remember correctly. This announcement after announcement and then finally a release date feels a bit over cooked....

 

I know DTG are a somewhat unconventional company, but it does seem a very odd way to treat customers. Have a leak of some WIP content which most people who visited the forum over the weekend have seen, digested and now all over social media DTG can't touch. But please don't discuss it until we say you can.

IMHO they need to read the current, relatively still buoyant, mood about a Premier Line coming to TSW and just get on with the announcement. To coin the old battle cliche, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, so at least consider bring Dovetail Direct forward a couple of weeks or just allow academic discussion to take place.

 

I thought about not switching to Windows 11. The system is simply too complicated for me, it even lacks some functions and the design is simply terrible. Windows 10 definitely will work for some time. I also have a second PC that still runs Windows Vista. I've never had any problems with it.

 

My plan's to jump from 10 to 12 eventually.

What buggers me most is that since Windows 11, you're required to have a Microsoft account, with all the consequences of telemetry. (Though I've heard of workarounds to still use a local profile.)

I've been using 7 until last year, and will stay on 10 for a while, as it is the best and most lean Windows ever imho. (And using OOSoftware's ShutUp10! all useless overhead / telemetry stuff is instantly disabled (Bing adverts in the start menu, Cortana etc...)

 

True. It really bothers me that you need an account. I don't want to let Microsoft force me to do this.
But I can't imagine that Microsoft will ever change that. They are trying to get to every user's data.

 

I didn’t realise that about the MS account. Fairly certain I’ve got one but never use it to log into Windows, just comes on. At the moment still deciding what to do, though some sort of hardware upgrade to my potato is overdue regardless of OS concerns.

 

On Windows 10, you could skip the "Connect to Microsoft Account" option on installation and create a normal oldschool local user account, on 11, you can't.

This is what needs to be done

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account

Though I would recommend, seeing the new MS AI software tracking your activities, to only use Windows for Gaming, and do other jobs on a Linux machine.

OldVern your "potato" might make a good Linux machine later. Try LinuxMint for example, there also very lean distrubutions like Xubuntu running fine on old hardware.

 

I have Windows 11 or whatever the latest version is and I have always declined to establish a Microsoft account. They kept asking for a while but then stopped. I simply have a password to open Windows.
( I still get all Windows updates plus security.)

 

Being on 10, I only report what I've read.

Maybe on earlier 11 versions which you may have had when setting it up, this was an option. Seems not for new customers. So don't reinstall

Or maybe you have a specific OEM version (don't know really if that's still a thing today) which doesn't need that.

 

Yes, Windows 11 came pre- installed on my machine. No setup required really.

 

I've managed to create a Windows 11 VM without a Microsoft account. I can't remember if I used Rufus or not. I use Linux Mint on my main machine, but Windows 10 on my laptop. I'm thinking of moving my laptop to Linux when support runs out and just using a VM for Windows software when I need to.

 

There's no way to please everyone. One side would say dtg are saying nothing and are communicating poorly. One side would say what you say and say to wait until closer to release. Whether dtg say or don't, there will always be complainers

 

Communicate on what is out and keep development stuff quiet, everyone wants to know what is being made but it's a two month wait for an announcement and then another month or two after that. Better to either keep quiet completely or be pretty open about what's cooking. This halfway house approach probably encourages someone to spill the beans which was going to happen sooner or later.

 

Totally understand this but "to be announced" mentioned 5 times of different content is as vague and non exciting as it gets... is it a feature? A route? Etc... it would be nice to know that at least!

 

And speaking of MK2s. We have this thing back in the modern BR days yet we still havent get them yet and uses the wrong version of the MK2 still on railtours :/ (pictures are from armstrong powerhouse cuz for some reason i cant find those pictures during the BR era). Whenever can we actually get these versions of the MK2 (pretty sure these are Mk2D and MK2F versions).

 

and another topic. I know the WCML related stuff was leaked earlier, with current DTG antics i cant help but worry that we wont be getting london euston, that or just that we dont get the full creation of WCML South. I know those are just leaks at the moment and i may be getting ahead of myself here, however I do hope i am wrong-

 

I don't tend to pay a whole lot of attention to the hopium/copium stuff that dribbles out this time of year, or the roadmap for that matter (there is the odd exception of course). If the devs are bringing more DLC, another version of the base sim, what have you, I'll look at it when it's in the shop. If it interests me, I'll get it, if not then I won't...and I ignore Steam reviews anyway. It's a business and they'll push out whatever they have decided will fill the coffers. If it doesn't sell, then that's on them, not us.

 

Steam (locos) was done poorly because its their own fault, hell in the peak forest route it couldve have a complete new fleet of steam locos, but all we got was a 4f and reused steam locos from crewe to liverpool because DTG was being lazy.

 

I don't think "lazy" is appropriate. It was just over their heads how to transfer steam to SimuGraph.

Still intriguing how Smokebox managed to do all this for TSC, providing beginner and expert modes.

SimuGraph has its advantages, also for devs, but in the end, the outcome for the player matters, not how it's done internally. Clever scripts can outplay the best simugraph spaghetti.

 

It would be short sighted not to go to Euston but Euston to Watford might be coming at the price of not going further north than Milton Keynes. However I don’t think we are allowed to say more than that or discuss the clues from the leaked imagery. As an ideal it would be nice to get at least London to Rugby including via Northampton, but I don’t see that somehow.

 

I get that something happened over last weekend when I wasn't visiting the forums... Somehow I'm not interested in watching the Dovetail Direct, either, despite not knowing what was leaked. I'll probably only read some article that will appear at that time.

I switched to Linux on the machine which was running Windows 7 until last year. TSW4 works fine with GE-Proton there. No problems there with updates that shut down airports and other things, either.

 

They have been honest. From the pullup website since March. Read the 12 month revenue line.

 

For clarity (sorry if I am teaching any people to suck eggs), that shows the time it takes to pay back the production debt for each type of product.

 

Thats subjective in my opinion. The leaks over the weekend were purely down to DTG treating punters with contempt. You only have to go back a year or so to see how open the Roadmap streams were. The current crop of Community Managers have moved away from openness. Their favourites lines are ‘here’s an announcement about an announcement’ & ‘we cant talk about that here’…

 

108 pages of "Enough is enough" is hilariously less emphatic that its title suggests.

"The leaks over the weekend were purely down to DTG treating punters with contempt"

Well, I hope you let DTG know that they don't need to waste time identifying the origin of the breach of contract because you've fully investigated it yourself and have found the cause. Don't publish your detailed report here though as that would also be a breach.

Just for a sanity check here. DTG make gaming software which no-one is forced to buy. Luckily when people graduate to having real life problems, they tend to get a better sense of perspective.

 

The leaks were not down to DTG treating punters with contempt. All content that has ever been made by DTG is secret up to the point where it isn’t and it isn’t up to us or a lone idiot in the beta testers to decide when everyone gets to know about it. The leak was down to someone ignoring their responsibilities and going against whatever they had agreed with DTG in their NDA. The punters could easily have waited until the announcement and everyone in the chain of leaking the content hasn’t done anyone any favours. It could make future content worse by limiting the beta testers access and opportunity to give valuable feedback at an early enough stage of development to make the content the best it can be. DTG are not to blame for the leak and certainly not the current community managers as you suggest.

 

Most ridiculous thing I've seen today.

Sure, let's blame DTG for the leak.

Whoever decided to make the leak is not at all to blame. Even though they literally broke the law by going against the terms of a legal agreement.

 

Absolutely this. Whatever we might feel about DTG's marketing and announcement policy, if you are in a position of trust under NDA you do not abuse it. To use the old wartime analogy, careless talk costs lives and could literally cost you yours, as the penalty for wilfully passing information to the enemy was often death, if caught and convicted.

 

I do find it interesting that DTG always hold everything so close to their chests.. what would be the reasons for doing that?

Hiding products from the competition? - not really relevant in this case as DTG own the product and control all 3rd party content as well and there is no real competition to bring out a competing train simulation route against them

Being unsure of development, not wanting to promise something they end up not being able to achieve? I find that quite a worrying idea for a company who have been established so long (with that many years of experience) that they start a project not being sure they are able to manage it's timescales or even whether it will complete so they don't talk about it. That also shows they would rather hide their mistakes than own up to them.

Not making things known in advance means that they don't have to see any feedback or discussion that could influence the project? "Don't let those pesky customers correct mistakes or offer suggestions. We'll do it how we decide and they can like it or lump it" - looking at you Peak Forest with your nowhere to nowhere route when community feedback was too late to do anything about

Is it because their decisions are not generally popular? DTG make A LOT of unpopular decisions so do they try and keep everything hidden as long as possible to minimise the fallout

I think it says a lot about a company. Those that are community focused tend to be very open, welcoming community input as they progress on a project and being honest when they can't deliver something they plan or explaining what's going on. Those that are very closed off tend to be cold, eyed with suspicion, doubted in their integrity and often get called out for their somewhat false appearance when they try and be all "friendly". They rarely get the benefit of the doubt in any situation, and that is what happens to DTG constantly.

Whatever the reason/s, at the end of the day it's a management choice and a culture of the company for many years.

Turning to now, the current situation is very odd. I knew nothing about the leaks as I don't come here very often, so I read all the fallout in here and other threads but none of the removed details.. so I went off to YouTube to find out what happened. DTG could have handled my inquisitiveness themselves, but because they've gone their usual route of "quick, hide everything and pretend nothing happened" I sought that information elsewhere and thereby got the "dirty version" of it.

DTG's fear of WIP images is quite telling to me. I've often posted WIP images, sometimes with errors and people have pointed them out - sometimes I already knew, sometimes I didn't and it was great to learn. But they never had a bad effect on sales because it was quite easy to post a follow up showing the fix.
Of course that does rely on you ACTUALLY fixing the problem...

 

Today I learned the customers are the enemy. ROFL

Anyway, I didn't see the leak and I'm not even interested what it contained.

 

In that case, perhaps it would be reasonable to make up the Simugraph set up so that the performance output is realistic, at the expense of the internal simulation being faked?

 

Reminds me of FIFA or any EA franchise to be honest. I'm sure the prices will be higher as well, £50 for standard as a guess.

 

Tbf they might as well just redo Euston to Brimingham. surely TSW is capable of doing so??
and if they arent, at this point buying TSC might be even more worth it

 

DTG certainly don't do themselves any favors. I can understand why they would want to keep things under wraps as that creates speculation and potential hype, but you are just asking for someone to leak something so they know what the unannounced product is. I think also that announcing something early could have the benefit of generating hype but also getting community feedback to ensure that the end product is as good as it possibly can be.

 

I don't think you have the experience necessary in Simugraph to make this claim.
Also DTG could almost certainly have fixed steam if they actually allocated resources to it.

That's not how amortisation works.

 

Then name another Train Sim available on console.
Not everyone has that next gen gaming PC/laptop (and even then some Train sins for PC have awful optimisation so that next gen PC struggles)

DTG have a virtual monopoly over console.

 

But you choose to spend money on it. So, no, they're not forcing you, you're choosing to. There's a difference.

 

You raise a valid point. It is ultimately my choice to buy the game.
The distinction here is a lack of alternatives.

With limited competition, there is a risk of stagnation and less innovation. Monopoly-like conditions can lead to complacency in addressing community concerns and improving game quality. Especially if people cannot afford the more flexible and diverse gaming experience provided by a gaming PC. This pressure undermines the argument that purchasing is purely my choice.

Give people an alternative and see how many would make the switch.

 

SCS probably the best example. They announced Nordic Horizons for ETS2 some time ago even though months away from release. Forum feedback positive and likely to influence what goes in there (in my case, please, please include the wonderful road in ProMods that goes up to Honningsvag and Nordkapp). Then you have Run 8 with zero roadmap and generally no indication of what's in the pipeline until literally the day it releases. Still no excuse for a NDA breach but it has to be said, teasing stuff without the slightest clue as to what it is leads to frustration and kind of pointless.

 

Think what you want. The quality of releases are surely proving my point to be more valid than your ever unsubstantiated claims. One-man development has produced great steam engines in a script based engine, and simple arcade style physics on SimuGraph.
Just saying "they did not allocate resources" can be dismissed as apologist speculation, just to hide the fact that the core game is not as good as some want us to believe. And in the end the player doesn't have to care how a certain output value gets generated from many inputs. It has to work, has to be simulated if you call your game a sim. Don't see any of that in TSW's steamers. 100 mph with 50% cutoff, and boiler pressure still happily above 200 psi. Amazing. Wrong usage of the front/rear dampers needed for a "realistic challenge" (I do love this thread though as it has entertaining and well articulated posts.)

And if a game that exists for more than seven years now has "potential" is fairly irrelevant, if it's not being used. The customer doesn't want to buy "potential".

The fact that developers with more experience than you or I got have dismissed the game as being "borked" and not capable of simulating steam speaks volumes.

So instead of taking the opportunity to explain why SimuGraph can do it, you went Ad Hominem and speculated about my lack of experience. As you always seem to do with your mostly one liner answers, sounding like "It's like that because I say it and I don't need to explain why."

 

[EDIT - Jan Quarrelsome]

 

Imagine TSW trying to simulate the NZ steamers where you also have to manage the oil feed to the cylinders. Mind even I struggled with that and thought it maybe a step too far! But the state they left steam in is shameful. For some reason I briefly fired up TSW yesterday evening and decided to use the lucky dip. Found myself in the Re-Record scenario on ECML trying to get the Flying Dustbin up to 100 MPH. The scenario is flawed anyway in that they start you at Doncaster but the speed attempt doesn't take place until Stoke Bank after Grantham. So you have pretty much an hour of driving the worst steam loco in TSW until you get to the bit that matters. They could easily have started at Grantham or at worst Newark. Then whoever put the scenario together decided to set the weather to heavy fog so you can't see a bl**dy thing of the lineside scenery to alleviate the boredom. Think I stuck it out until Retford then threw in the towel, went over to New Zealand in TSC (with a diesel, mind).