Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! It's Almost The 3 Year Anniversary

It could just as easily be a scenario whereby an already smaller userbase is being further narrowed down by those who only have a preference to routes in their own country of origin and a third party developer (who has put all their eggs in a single basket) considering the best way to generate a return on their endeavours. So what do they do? Instead of having a little confidence in the quality of their product and marketing it at a price that would be more appealing to a wider audience, they instead go down this utterly, utterly stupid path of pricing it out of the market for everyone but those who have that genuine interest in their product. Meaning?.....those who want it are paying a premium for those who don't.

Look, if that expert 101 had been (example) a tenner I'd have thought "you know what, I'm pretty useless with trains but I'll give it a try anyway". For thirty quid though! Sorry, but as a hard working person who values their money I'm just not that wrong in the head to even consider thinking about spending that much on a single train. .
How many others thought exactly the same thing?

Sure, it's real easy to say that people would probably still not have bought it at £10...but how do they know? Just like every other overpriced (and yes, they ARE overpriced) addon that graces TSW, they weren't given the opportunity not to buy it!

 

It's completely normal for the prices of DLCs to rise. We all suffered from the high inflation over the last couple of years and DTG also needs to pay their staff fair. It's also understandable that, with a fixed price for DLCs, you'll get some routes with a better price-to-quality/length ratio and some that are worse. It's just annoying that if you pay 36€ for a 64km route without any new rolling stock, there are still many errors and bugs. And it wouldn't even be a problem if DTG would fix all of these things, but we all experienced their behavior with prior DLCs.
Pfälzische Ludwigsbahn is especially annoying because they only used existing rolling stock, but didn't change the minor details that are different on these trains. Like the passenger doors on the 425, the cab with French safety systems on the 406 and I don't have to start with the high-entry Dostos. DLCs just always feel rushed and the number of bugs, hastily built areas, and signaling errors are really annoying if you pay more money for such a DLC than you need to pay for a railway game from another developer. The yearly releases of a new TSW version didn't help either, as it seems the developers spend more time on making a "new" version, which isn't even necessary and the actual problems keep getting pushed aside.
I think DTG management must change its strategy because with the current trajectory, they might lose a larger amount of their core audience and with such a niche interest as railway simulation, I doubt there are enough new players that can fill the void.

 

I would have given the Expert 101 a try at £10 for sure. It's the classic commerce argument, of course. Do you retain the "kudos" and sell 500 units for £30 or take a chance you set the base price at £10 and sell 5000 units!

An analogy is the current situation in the supermarkets where brand name soups and baked beans from Heinz cost nearly twice what the supermarket own brand (which often taste better), do. If DTG don't watch out they will be in serious danger of imploding their own product and blame the customers for not supporting it. If we are indeed seeing new routes with trains for £33 and without for £30, that means next year they will probably hike to £38 and £33 respectively. At that point, even if it is a Shap or Mittenwald, the wallet will say "no". The fact no one form the EP downwards has been prepared to state publicly these are the new price levels or vehemently deny, kind of says it all.

 

hundreds of gb of update and Fulda still crashing on xbox, dtg sucks.

 

Here's a question, do we think the product quality for TSW5 as a whole merits a price increase? TSW5 has probably been the most unstable iteration so far Imo? Does the newest DLC measure up well or badly to previous releases? It's also had more performance issues IMO. If we were getting higher quality dlc which was part of a more polished product I'd be more inclined to part with more money.

Like even the patch notes and the patch release has been a total mess today. They didn't proof read them before they released them and some of them for WCMLOS are so confusing even Benedict had no clue what they were referring too? One post referred to Xbox CTD once the patch was installed also?

I worry about DTG as a whole at the moment because it seems like they're really struggling in all areas?

 

TSW5 to me has seen a serious slump in the quality of the product - both the core and certainly the in house DLC. But more worrying is the fact no one seems to care... The project senior manager apparently no longer looks at the forum much less respond to valid concerns, which okay the Community Managers should be getting in and doing a better job on his behalf at least. The ongoing impression I have is of an organisation that has severely contracted over the last 18 months or two years and seemingly don't have much in the way of in house resources anymore, whether coders or developers. TSC, Catan and Fishing sit largely abandoned. They bought in CTS and have pushed it out of early access to full retail when it patently is nowhere near ready.

I just hope they can rise back up from this, rally the company and the product, however one cannot help but fear the worst too.

 

This company is just compost from initial idea, more and more bugs, less and less simulation, more and more triviality...

 

I fully agree with you on that and there are more and more signs indicating TSWs product life cycle is slowly coming to an end... Not this year, maybe not next as well, but I'll heavily doubt we'll get to a lets say TSW10 at this point.
And the increased pricing doesn't do much favor to this either, just look at the stream attendance - during peak TSW2 times there were nearly around 2,000 viewers on Roadmap streams whereas we know are at about 1/4 of it. I suspect sales numbers to be declining in a similar manner as well... and a price increase isn't always the solution, even if everything else got more expensive as well - if we all pay more for our costs of life, don't we consider every expense even more than we used to, especially if the quality of a product is declining as well?
Another example: at our local football club, the prices for hop-based refreshment drinks went from about 3,00€ to 7,00€ over the years.
While my attendance hasn't changed, I used to spend 1-2 drinks each game earlier on, spending at least about 120€ a year. Nowadays I'm at 14€ for the whole season, even if the team are trying to do their best and play so bad that you can't stand it without hop-based refreshment drinks of a brewery... so which model makes more sense commercially?
TSW is a bit of the same (although better for the liver) - I'm still yet to buy any TSW5 content yet and with the ongoing console issues not even going for Garmisch-Innsbruck, although I'd really like to...

 

That was Glossip, I thought the lower price was due to it being only 20 miles, not anything to do with no new stock.

Because the Goblin had a new train and was cheaper because if the length. And the Maintalbahn as well.

 

Focus' focus is having the wrong focal length, even the broader picture seems to have been lost in the hazy clouds that surround the management floor in DTG Towers.

 

I think I’m going to hold off DLC until the game is more stable. It’s difficult because ultimately what’s to say DTG and the game will even be around in a few years at this rate. Things need to improve, and they need to be frank with us that things aren’t good just now

 

You are right. There has never been a pricing difference based on the number of new trains just the shorter routes were cheaper. There hasn’t been a change in policy there and the only price increase was the change to the standard route DLC from £25 to £30 a while back with shorter routes sometimes being £5 cheaper, and a small increase in price of loco DLC at the same time. There’s also no indication of a further price increase, and only JT and TSG routes have been more expensive (and TSG’s loco DLC). DTG could increase their prices at any time in the future of course but nothing has changed yet. No idea where people are getting the idea that it’s already happened because it hasn’t.

 

People only buy things they want at the end of the day. Doesn't necessarily result in more sales just because it's cheaper. A dlc or game could be cheap and low quality so players won't buy it. If the price it too cheaply, they don't break even and they start losing money and the company no longer exists. Also remember dtg, focus, distributing platforms and so much more take a cut of the cost so 3rd parties get very little at the end.

 

This is true, but that is also not a binary choice - 100% buy at any cost or 100% not buy at any cost is not a reality.

Personal value is a huge consideration.
For example I just picked up Blackpool for ~£10. For me, it wasn't worth £30 but that's not to say that it isn't worth £30... but on a platform I never play (my last DLC purchase was SoS), for an era/traction type I'm not totally into, it wasn't for me. But it's so well spoken of I wanted to try it and £10 was enough for me say I'll give it a look.
That was MY personal value threshold, and will differ for everyone. They could offer me most TSW DLC for 50p a time and I wouldn't buy it because I'm just not interested in the traction types, location or era. If someone produced a high quality (working!) TSW version of Riviera Line in the Fifties (or even better pre-BR) I'd drop £150 on that without a thought because I know how much time and pleasure I'd get using it.

Value is a tricky argument - how would you feel if they sold a DLC for £10,000? Might sound ridiculous but if they had 10 rich players to whom £10k is pocket change (I believe the industry term for such people is "Whales"), then it'd make total business sense. But I would hazard a guess that 99.999% of players would throw their toys out that they could never own said DLC because it was too expensive for them.

 

A scenario has never arisen where Dovetail Games (or a third party developer) has stated that they've lost money through selling an addon too cheaply, so how on earth could you even start to speculate that it's not a financially viable approach to reduce prices?

Furthermore, how many multiple hundreds of times have you seen "I'll wait for a hefty sale" comments on these forums? That fact in itself suggests that if those people indeed *do* wait for a sale then any loss of revenue has no adverse effect whatsoever on developers because guess what....they're all still here making stuff for TSW. Every single on of them!

 

Does anyone know why Gianluca posts random pics of trains on various posts that have nothing to do with the topic?

 

Page count related train class numbers. Somehow this weird tradition entered the board. But then again, what isn't weird on this forum?
I even posted a car class number (page 116).

 

Edit: Would be a great addition to TSW by the way.

 

At least others can learn/remember various classes type

 

Maybe this is more of a PC-minded thread, but perhaps it's time to add the Xbox problems with draw distance to the pile, to raise further awareness.

Long story short: even on the best Xbox, Xbox Series X, the limited draw distance causes entire mountain ranges to disappear. See the latest thread about it (which was stealthily relocated from the main forum to the much less visible troubleshooting forum):

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/mittenwaldbahn-has-no-mountiains-on-xbox-x.89201/

Here is what Matt had to say about it roughly a year ago:

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/psa-a-dire-lack-of-mountains-on-xsx.79884/#post-813651

In the meantime, nothing has been done about the problem. So, if you are on Xbox and you're looking at the marketing pictures or admiring the latest stream, nothing prepares you for the lack of mountains in the actual game. Which can be pretty jarring if you're familiar with the scenery.

Anyway. I hope DTG will finally address this problem.

 

The draw distance isn't that great on PC. Unless you edit the ini file.
More graphics options have been a popular request on the forum, still to no avail.

 

The difference in draw distance between PS5/PC and Xbox Series S|X is shocking, as can be seen in the threads I linked to. For mountainous routes, it's just not the same product on Xbox - but it's advertised as if it is.

 

Ah ok, thank you.

 

Say, does DTG still have the PRESS license?

 

Matt's response to that makes it seem like there is nothing they can do about it. If it's still true that you can't have separate builds for the Series S versus the X, then there really is no alternative. You can blame MIcrosoft for the decision making regarding that.

 

I was gonna post this in it's own thread but that thread seems to have vanished, likely sniped by DTG so imma post it here if that's ok.

A little while ago somebody found a trademark for "Project Subways" filed by DTG, that trademark ended up getting withdrawn likely because it was opposed however I decided to check again today and lo and behold they have registered a new trademark.

"Track Titans"

https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00004161202

This is I assume the same game with a different name but it seems to indicate that DTG are working on a new train game of some description, likely involving Subways.

 

I find that thread getting deleted very fishy. it seems like DTG doesn’t want any links to what they could be doing in the summer…


As for “Track Trains” this seems more like a cartoon name, rather than an actual simulator. And considering the Thomas licence is partnership, it’s got me worried, for the future of this game…

 

DTG is runned by a bunch of kids and a former EA employee as CEO

That said, what else can we expect from the future of tsw?

 

wouldn’t say that. It’s just the higher ups making the money decisions, rather than the community decisions. DTG is filled with good people, with good hearts, and good talent. But the management is sour.

 

There, there. Don't start to insult the staff. There are things to criticize, but most of these things are management-related. The developers are doing their best. If you've got something that annoys you, write it out, but don't start to call people names.

 

and in my opinion this got even worse with the acquisition of dtg by focus entertainment, that is, what was already bad got worse

 

by "kids" I meant the top management who are the ones who actually make the decisions, the developers are not to blame for the horrible decisions of their superiors

 

I don't care if you've only meant management or the entire staff, it isn't good criticism. It doesn't help anyone if we just start insulting people. That's why Matt left the forums, and I can understand that very well. Do complain about things that are going wrong, but stay fair.

 

You mean this thread? https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/track-titans-a-new-railway-game-by-dtg.88940/

 

That was actually the first time I’d seen the “Titans” thread. As being discussed, it could just be the marketing blurb for TSW6, hopefully the “Titans” being a Deltic, GTEL and V200!

 

Exactly people moan about developers not interacting on the forums but it is any wonder when you see some of the comments and vitriol on here

Calling people names is childish in itself and shows you don't have much of an argument.

 

Indeed. I can be quite critical of DTG and some of their decisions and actions (or lack thereof). But it doesn’t really do to name or insult individuals - though I will admit to the odd whimsy about pink headphones - as at best it makes them feel unappreciated.

 

Well, who knows what this all means, but if it includes a 3rd gen GTEL as part of a remastered Sherman Hill with the missing 3rd track, hey ho!!

However, I'm not sure that DTG is currently sufficiently equipped to build such a powerful and complex locomotive. I mean an F59 is one thing but...........?

 

Can SimuGraph even simulate a gas turbine? That would kill a GTEL before they could even start.

 

If you had to simulate something big from UP at this point you'd be miles better off with the DDA40X. Both because I'm more convinced Simugraph could actually handle it, but also because it should be relatively easy to get good reference and recordings for them. There's at least a dozen or so in preservation, have to imagine at least one of those places would be willing to work with DTG if they poked around. And they use the same prime motors as the SD40's I believe, so I'd think it would be relatively easy to rework the existing SD40-2 sound-sets to match. And that's not even mentioning that you could potentially just record 6936 if you could work with RRHMA.

 

Thing is, the sounds from the SD40-2 are pretty old and dated, and I know it would get pointed out DTG would be reusing those old sounds again...

 

God this game is buggier than ever.

In the last week or so I keep saying random dispatcher messages popping up on my screen when starting a run. They are not for my train. They usually say "denied, wait for signal to change" or "denied, train is occupying the next block". If I do a dispatcher call myself, it says everything is fine and proceed as signals indicate.

Also tried to to a freight run on the Worcester Line just now. Released the brakes but the rear of the consist didn't want to move. Applied more throttle which resulted in the trucks of the locomotive freaking out, phasing out from under the locomotive and the whole consist derailing from the tracks.

Like is this the state of the game now? A simple wheel slip totally crashing the physics system?

 

That's the secret new multiplayer mode

Also the new secret multiplayer mode, guy in the rear loco putting the handbrake on to mess with you

 

Unrelated but your pfp is terrifying

 

Glad you like it

 

Fred looks like this in real life... So it's one or the other...

 

In the meantime, the senior management will continue to keep their heads in the sand and “no longer look at the forum”.

Is it me or did this wall of silence seem to start after the general derision with which the “Big Reveal” and subsequent Fireside Chat regarding Thomas was greeted? To take umbrage over the reception an announcement of a toy train add on received is definitely not reading the room. Did they genuinely feel we would all be going ooohhh and aaahhh over the little Blue toe rag?!

 

My guess it their parent Focus Entertainment did think so after having acquired the Mattel license? Perhaps some other console games featuring Mattel's toys will appear?
Sony's annual Playstation Network fees and the obsolescence of my PS4 made me give up on PS all together.