Do Dtg Tell Us About 'upcoming Content' Too Early?

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by darrrnel, Dec 7, 2025 at 3:21 PM.

  1. paulossj4

    paulossj4 Active Member

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    I believe we have to look at both sides:

    DTG: Premature announcements can create false expectations, as happened last year with Thomas, where the vast majority expected something unprecedented, which it was, but aimed at a specific niche. There's also the issue of the GWE Remaster, which was announced a long time ago and still hasn't been released, as it's a personal project for someone with other commitments.

    Users: Most of the time, users complain if there are no announcements of new routes or trains, especially in the monthly schedules, saying that the schedule is disappointing because it has no new offerings.

    I believe the main focus should be on keeping the game as stable as possible across all platforms, and temporarily "giving up" on new releases. Of course, this is almost impossible because they need to stay afloat financially, but the game has reached a point of bug after bug, in a vicious cycle that seems endless...
     
  2. Vinination

    Vinination Well-Known Member

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    The 420 is still coming for the Frankfurt Sbahn route.
    Various reasons why release takes that long mostly origins from the developer not having enough time to work on this side project.
    Not sure how long it will take if this cycle continues, so you only can wait.
     
  3. theorganist

    theorganist Well-Known Member

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    I honestly can't see the problem. I like to know what is coming up, there is plenty to play with in between. If it's something I'm interested in then it's something I can look forward to.

    They are moaned at for not announcing things much of the time, now they announce too early.

    Are "we" going to try and find fault with everything?

    The EP had horrible socks on during the last stream, DTG have the wrong make of kettle in their kitchen!
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2025 at 1:22 PM
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  4. Tigert1966

    Tigert1966 Well-Known Member

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    I can remember the times when DTG told us nothing and Sam (for those that remember him) introduced the roadmap. It was good but despite warnings that, sometimes, there wouldn't be anything to say, people soon started to complain about boring roadmaps. So I understand why DTG try to keep a stream of new announcements going.

    Do I think they a announce things too soon? Sometimes yes. If it's a developer that doesn't communicate and the product doesn't seem to move then I would prefer they left it later when there is some certainty. However I'd counter that by saying that some things are announced too late. Just Trains for example used to start dev blogs really early, for TSC, and you could see how things were progressing. In TSW they can't start until DTG tell them. I'd love to see the development of their routes from an earlier stage.

    Ultimately I think it's fine and we need to have patience. But it wouldn't hurt to have more regular updates on the things that are delayed or even cancelled to set our expectations.
     
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  5. Princess Entrapta

    Princess Entrapta Well-Known Member

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    I would be fine with "It's ready when it's ready". Worked fine most of my life. I don't need to know anything about a game until it's done and ready to play.
     
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  6. DTG Alex

    DTG Alex Senior Community Manager Staff Member

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    This is a fun topic of conversation, and honestly, it's a big part of the work I support on with our Roadmap.

    For most of our announcements, we tend to only reveal them publicly once we've been sent a build that we can test and get a better understanding of release timelines and development work still required. Most of the time we get these builds, we can be only a few months away from release, and hence our reveal -> launch period in its "perfect" case, is on this timeframe. It gives us a good few healthy roadmap updates of excitement, and then a few more detailed articles leading up to release.

    Of course, there are cases where this really clearly isn't the case - and trust me when I say, it's not always easy to predict for certain add-ons. We've talked at arms length about how development time can vary, and different stages take longer, or priorities with development teams shift around. The 420 is a great example of something that, at multiple points now, we had a timeline we were working towards for release, which to our knowledge was correct, and then later changed. It's fair to say that the edge cases mentioned above have made us reconsider the entire process a few times.

    The only hammer to this is that events like Dovetail Direct and Season of Reveals are so good at bringing people together, raising awareness for our game and boosting updates to as many players at once, that if we have something we'd like to include in these events, we do push a little bit extra (but, maybe at times, too much). Tadami has been waiting a long time now, and I think if we were to do that over, it makes sense to keep that "announce -> launch" window much smaller.

    In my view, and from how the community and players seem to react, I think it makes a lot of sense to minimise these windows as much as possible where we can, and even if it means some of our events have a few less reveals, I'd be in favour of that. Constantly an evolving discussion, and again it's never easy - sometimes our view of the next 3-6 months can change, and oftentimes this is completely out of our control.

    Appreciate the thoughts folks - the end result is how players feel about the game, future developments, and the experience with our communications, so I'll aim to keep making sure we're doing the best we can. :)
     
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