Dovetail Can Do Longer Routes But Seem To Refuse To These Days.

In summary, we can probably discuss the semantics of official DLC for TSW vs Snowrunner vs ETS2/ATS until blue in the face but my personal view is with a few exceptions I have probably got more £ for £ value out of the latter ones than for TSW.

 

I think at it's base, it becomes an "opportunity cost" issue. You COULD make a much longer route... but then you aren't building 2-4 shorter (ie "normal") routes.
Depends on how long you think "long" is.... 150 miles? 200 miles? 300 miles? If you figure the "average" is 50 miles or less, then that is how many other routes you'd have to NOT do.
You'd have to take that development staff from other projects to do it, and that concentrates all that investment in ONE route that people may or not like. Doing several smaller routes not only fills up the release roadmap, generating "buzz" but it also hedges your bets that you can stumble across something of those that a player will like.
It's just a far bigger gamble doing on, long route.
If for example they said 'we're halting all the other routes this year and doing the entire West Coast Mainline route of 400 miles".... some people would say "wow, that's amazing! Awesome!"
Meanwhile... the people waiting for those 8 other routes would be very very upset.
Especially the ones that don't buy UK content, like German fans.
If your response is "well they could hire more developers"... then that makes it even worse because you'd have to go into debt to make it on top of everything else.
It's just a very risky business move that would anger more people than it would please.
Because how many of even those "long route" players will scoff and say "well I didn't mean THAT long route! I wanted THIS long route!"

 

Not the first time people have mentioned this...
https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/excuse-for-dtg-not-to-produce-longer-routes.87016/
DTG would just put up poor excuses for not making any long routes if they had plan better like JustTrain.

If you want long routes i beg you to stop with TSW and invest in Train Simulator Classic, life is much better here. Take a look at Euston to Birmingham and Kings Cross to Peterborough (Woah, long routes and sections that doesnt even exist in TSW which exist in an older game?! Crazy right?!)

especially nowadays DTG is lazy to the point where they even just outright have Rivet make their routes, and you know rivet, they dont like producing long routes, only bad ones.

 

Is Just Trains a "long route" maker?
If so...then there are several routes in the game.
If not... then it's not comparable at all.
TSC routes are indeed longer, but they aren't as high quality graphics or console friendly...hence the OP.

 

WCML Over Shap have proven its point. And sure Blackpool branches isnt long but it has decent amount of branching paths. DTG's better product like ECW and Cathcart Circle is the better example.
As for TSC, I personally think the...graphics? doesnt really matter is it good or not? At least to TSW and TSC to each their own i think they stand on its own like their own style. There are enhancements that 3rd parties offers and i remember hearing about some other route in TSC that isnt the UK that have the graphics just like TSW. Just that most of the route people consider them "outdated". Its not the worse graphic but you can actually drive and route hop from London all the way to Scotland. TSW cant even do that. And look at here TSC can allow me to do this and TSW cant.

 

Last time I commented on an older thread that had been inactive I got slaughtered for it. So yes I know I have spoke about it before.

 

I think one of the current issues TSW has in comparison to something like ETS2 is the fact that the save system is quite frankly subpar.

In the cases of people who don't want/have the time to do long journeys, large routes are essentially a write off. I love long distance routes and the occasional freight run but, I often do not have the time to sit for an hour or 2 to get through these scenarios. I sympathise with people who want to be able to do a 30 minute run and then move on.

Because the save system as it currently stands doesn't really do its job, it essentially makes these kind of routes completely undesirable to a large percentage of the audience. In ETS2 it's great to be able to just jump in for the amount of time I have to spare and not worry about the scenario breaking if I return to it later. I don't believe dismissing these type of players as casuals is particularly useful or fair.

I think before DTG (or anyone else for that matter) put the effort into bigger routes, they really need to address the save system. It needs multiple slots and to retain things like PIS data.

It at least looks like console generation will no longer be a limiting factor going forward. (Not a console player but it is a bit scuffed that they'd make that change mid way through the lifecycle of an edition of the game).

 

Should it have to if TSC already does it and they're the same company? Does every game have to do everything?
Does TSC need an avatar you can walk around with like TSW just because you could put it in there?

 

to be fair you cant even walk to a lot of difference places within the station in TSW... JT routes did it best with it, but others are just not that great... you might as well just use freecam which is in both games to really explore the nearby scenery.