For some time ago DTG announced the 15th Anniversary of Train Simulator. 15 years lots of Routes over the (nearly) whole world. But some questions pops out regulary in some forums by (new) users again and again: What is the best route? What is your favorite one? What route can you suggest for me? .... Spoiler: read further There are reviews on steam, and some on forums. But overall there have all the same downside: they are specific. Sure, everyone can see how good a DLC is rated, but for an overlook over all routes a big task to watch into every product page, in every route thread (and here in the DTG forum I would say after my little looking into: you can forget it to take such those information). So here I had become a idea: a survey! A survey which list the DLC´s. All in once would be naturally to much, so it would be better to categorise them like for example: german routes, british routes, american routes. I´ve tried fo find a tool who is: easy to handle, no costs (such surveys DTG, Just Trains or other can make ) and where it is possible that users can look into the results. To find one is difficult. I found only one who seems usable, but here I have no clue how users can view the results, and on the other hand - they are also not presented very clearly. At least I found strawpoll. Here only one downgrade: the available options how a survey is done are limited. One of them includes a ranglist to rate answers in a list. So now my suggestion: Strawpoll can only handle one question instead of several one in one survey. So it needs several seperately links. But I think that should not a problem. Here´s the list of categories and questions for the surveys I think of: GERMANY: - Favorite german routes by DTG - Favorite german routes by RSSLO - Favorite german routes by GBE - Favorite german routes by other 3rd Party Developers UK - Favorite british routes by DTG - Favorite british routes by Just Trains - Favorite british routes by other 3rd Party Developers USA - Favorite american routes by DTG - Favorite american routes by other 3rd Party Developers OTHER STUFF - Favorite Swiss Routes - Favorite Austrian Routes (not from RSSLO) - Favorite Austrian Routes by RSSLO - Favorite European, African, Canada Routes - Favorite Asian Routes - Favorite Romanian Routes - Favorite Highspeed Routes - Favorite Suburban, Tram & Underground Routes (German+Austria, UK, USA+Japan) - Favorit Network Routes Of course all will be anonymous! No one must register, no one must tell a name. And no one must do all survey if he, as example has no american route. Here is some example how it would look like: https://strawpoll.com/NMnQN5k6Gg6 [it´s only a TEST] You can sort the routes by moving up or down. Depending on how much routes are listed the top 5, top 10 or top 20 gets automatically points from 1 to 5, 10, 20. It´s like similar to the pointings at the Eurovision Song Contest. So at the end - the route with the most points wins. Or with other words: people can see what routes are liked how much - at once and at one place! At the bottom of the survey you can view the results (Button "Ergebnisse") Soooo,what your mean? Is there interest? Of course it makes only sense if enough makes the surveys EDIT: CANCELED. Too less interest - so it makes no sense if only 4 people voted for yes
I mean, do what you want to do if this is what interests you then go for it, I'm in no way suggesting you don't. But. I for one cannot see the benefit or purpose of such a thing, it's of no use to the consumer (us), it's of no use to DTG, they know what people want and like but they don't create new content for TSC anymore only core updates (any new releases through them are from third parties DTG are just the publishers), and it's of no real use to third party developers as they already know what they want to create as it's usually something personally appealing to them. Seems like a lot of work for very little value if I'm honest. Anyway good luck with your project.
I really like the sound of this, sounds like some fun documentation to me! I appreciate that you’re not rude and dismissive of what may seem like a “useless” project like others are; but personally I always enjoy doing odd projects that in the end don’t mean much. Sometimes it’s just interesting to see what people think and compare statistics, even if no one is really going to use it. I like the sound of OPs idea.
The goal is noble: trying to guide new - and existing - players discover content matching their interest across the plethora of individually sizeable sources. I think a tagging system - and a big database - could possibly help. Such as a spreadsheet listing all items, and then everyone could narrow the list down to their preferences. It came up a few times over the years, people made their collections but never really materialized. (I remember supplying my own.) Part of the issue is, no one is really interested in it from a business side. Comparing DTG, AP, RSSLO, etc. The difficulty is people's opinion changing, expectations rising over time. Weardale used to be a standard recommendation for UK transition era but now it's bad trees, bad trains, bad weather, bad everything. With the amount of content it's difficult to rate. It's possible using transitivity. Regardless, needs an objective eye (authority) to compare-describe properly. (One more issue is that a lot of content went extinct. Licensing, hosting, DRM...) (One silly is that listing DLC is not quite sufficient. People are often looking for railroads, classes, liveries, or even assets. Like, which DLC has a Class 37. Or, rather, which does not.)
As the data set is huge, excluding workshop content the list would already be unwealdy. Here is my list with over 4,500 scenarios https://sites.google.com/view/trainsimulatorcontent/misc/all If you wish to sort the data simply use the web site as it is already the basis of the information!
There is already a list with rollmaterials and which DLC has them. Here for UK rollingstock: https://rail-sim.de/forum/lexicon/entry/186-rollmaterial-in-großbritannien/
And in 2022 I complained they have a Driving Van Trailer (Steuerwagen) in the loco section - two years later still there.
All of which goes to show a) how much content is out there, b) how hard it is to produce any list (regardless of category) which can be considered accurate and up to date. The two lists above are great as far as they go, but are obviously restricted in what they list, how frequently they are updated etc etc. Doing anything like this is a thankless task akin to pinning a tail on a fast-moving donkey with six legs heading in an unknown direction (whcih will change as soon as you look away from it). Best of luck to those trying to do so.
In theory, something like TS Tools could gather and aggregate a lot of things. One issue is that some of this happens to be unique, more or less. Converted scenarios, replaced stock... (Not to mention edited original! Still need MD5 on top of the ID.) The concept is somewhat similar to websites collecting Heroes of the Storm data. If enough people opt in to crawl their collection (installation) and submit (upload) it, it would be sufficient to achieve good enough state. Add the option to edit / vote metadata, and win. Issue is, it grows to be quite the project. Plus server costs. The relatively cheap version is aggregating a questionnaire of "list your 5 favorite DLC" and slightly curating it (e.g. sort by region). But that likely won't support exploring, like literally no one will write ECML 2012 (2007) on this list, despite being part of the deal.
