Wasn't going to wade in on this discussion, but I think it's worth adding my thoughts at this point. I started playing at TSW 2 stage I think, when they did the Bakerloo Line anyway. Back then, the game was relatively small in terms of core and DLC and I think all of it was developed and released by DTG. They seemed to hold the core game development and development of DLC close and were active in seeking community feedback and engaging with users to make the game better. Now, and maybe it is increased rapidly more recently, the core game is old and only modified to create additional features to add new interest or realism and DLC are produced by third parties. As such, the game has a long legacy and a decentralised approach to new content development. It isn't owned quite so closely by DTG anymore. DTG will have their own idea of what good looks like for the game, but it is definitely different now than whe I started. The game is definitely still the best train driving sim by a very long way, no doubt, and this includes consideration of it's bugs and quirks.
You know, the important part of your post is this setence. DTG is so seperated from its community, see e.g. "the big reveal" a few years back (no, not the Thomas one, the other one, a few years before, it was even worse). Promises from Matt on livestreams that increase hope that DTG is actually not so far seperated from the community, but soon afterwards it's clear, the promises were either false and never made the game or are in an unacceptable state (e.g. random events). In the end, if you stay on this forum a few years, you can see a clear pattern. New people joining with a new iteration of TSW, having hope in DTG, engaging in interesting discussions in this forum. A few months forward, the hope turned into frustation towards DTG and some of them vanished completely from TSW, while others open threads on the state of the game.
I think accusing people of exaggerating bugs to justify complaining, without any evidence, is pretty extreme and quite inflammatory. Perhaps the person in question would like to present his evidence. If he can’t, he should apologise and withdraw his comments.
Must admit I’ve just spent time reading this whole thread and the one thing that really jumps out at me is not once, unless I’ve scrolled past, has anyone from DTG had the nerve to respond. Bit like WWI & II, hunkered down in the trenches with tin hats on. I’ve been getting very annoyed over the last few years of the hollow promises to fix fairly obvious bugs in the game. These bugs are so obvious that during any testing they would leap out with a sign saying “I’m a big ugly bug “. The last DLC’s I’ve bought was 805 (refunded) and 90. These are on X Box series X. No other game that I’ve got and play have bugs, or not that are obvious. Honestly feel DTG lost a lot of momentum when they got sold a few years back. Now they are part of a corporate entity and anyone who has worked for a company in that situation will be aware how things go. My situation has made me think twice about buying any DLC for this game. Having made a decision I will no longer be parting with my money on this game. The DLC’s that I have will keep me playing. From time to time IF and WHEN anything appears that draws my attention then I will consider it. Sales plus Microsoft rewards may take enough off to make it a no brainier but this is one customer that DTG has successfully annoyed enough that they will no longer get money from me and I bought every DLC like most of you up to a year ago. Now if hundreds of people are doing the same it’s going to be as dead as Kelsey’s nuts before too long.
Watch it or the hurty word police will be around followed swiftly by accusations of exaggeration! You naughty boy!
I believe that most are exaggerating most issues and why communicate with a community if there is nothing to report or if they are receiving abuse over these exaggerated bugs. I certainly don’t fancy communicating with whining people who frankly need to grow up and possibly go outside
Again with the infighting... I don't believe people are exaggerating their issues and bugs, there is just no benefit to it. There's a problem and you spot it, you mention it. Like I've reported around 10 bugs across TSW5 & 6, those are the ones that I've seen or encountered be it a small error or something that crashes the game altogether. I don't see any benefit for me to make up a dozen more problems as that means the bug-busting team will be running around looking for things that aren't actually broken. Granted some people are more unlucky due to their system set-up or choice of platform and might see more bugs than others, doesn't mean they are wrong either. As someone else further up the thread said, the sound of silence from DTG is shocking however, has someone struck a nerve? Or is it a case of DTG HQ telling CM's not to comment, it happens, sometimes for good/genuine reasons and other times for bad. Still it would be nice to have one of the DTG crew turn up and say "we hear you, we're not going to fix it but we hear you"...
The problem is DTG ignoring the constructive feedback just frustrates the community, frustrated players then get annoyed and no longer always act in reasonable manner so DTG vanish because the feedback isn’t constructive. Telling players who are frustrated and apportioning blame for issues that “they are being unproductive” and “making devs not want to fix bugs” just then winds players up even more. Seeing genuine issues brought up in a reasonable fashion on the forums totally ignored by the CMs then seeing the same community managers on discord talking to players about applying for jobs or comparing photos of pets just riles players further.
There appears to be an update for Thomas & Friends Wonders of Sodor coming on the 27th of April, I wonder if this might have been eating up some of the time of the DTG team to some degree? https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3743790/view/493849057074086445?l=english
I’m not entirely sure, but didn’t DTG say that the team working on *Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor* is different from the team responsible for *TSW*? Because I can’t imagine that the entire DTG team is now working solely on *Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor*; and if they are, that’s a slap in the face for the customers who spent their money on *TSW*.
This is where I draw the line. The discord chat. 99% is off topic nonsense that belongs in private chat.
TSW Discord may have 10,000 members but it’s mostly the same people duplicating silly suggestions with zero context added, then bumping them continually by announcing how many upvotes they’ve had, general off topic chat which has nothing to TSW and the pets channel(what is that all about really and what is it doing in a supposed train oriented channel). The CM then spend time chatting in these off topic sections the have the gaul to say they don’t have time to acknowledge actual genuine feedback on the forums in the feedback section and then wonder why forum members feel unheard. Just to be abundantly clear, I’m not directing any of this criticism directly at the community managers, they have a job to do and it’s clear they are being directed and instructed by their management to direct their attention and energy towards discord.
Considering the file structure of WoS is the same as TSW, it must’ve poached some staff away from TSW. It’s so similar that you can make Sodor show in TSWs menu but something is causing a crash if I attempt to load it, I imagine some missing assets.
To be honest I took one look on a YouTube video and thought "that's just TSW with a different coat on" (gross oversimplification I know), it's clearly used it as a base. I wonder has anyone tried putting TSW locos in it?
Makes me wonder if it is a separate thing because of the response to the first Thomas thing they did.
I think that you can only use loco's that were not created for TSW6 for TTTE, the TSW6 ones crashed it from memory (so that's the 220 + 802 etc)
I think someone mentioned the game is based on TSW5. Might be worth seeing if you can transfer the TTTE locos to 5.
Just placing myself in DTGs shoes (insert third rail joke later), it must be insane seeing the inner workings of your workplace being debated at length by customers in a forum. It must be frustrating, demotivating if you let it get to you, sometimes it may act as timely reminder and sometimes it must be quite funny when there's a particularly bad opinion stated as fact based on nothing but vibes and fresh air. And DTG while I've got your attention from across the estuary, I really don't like where you've put the office water cooler, you should put it over there next to the Health & Safety noticeboard.
Maybe there are plain clothed agents among us? One of them may have just posted "Folkestone to Folkestone Harbour" in the Suggestions thread which is code for.....actually, I've said too much.
My money would be on the chap called "Sierra Oscar" though maybe I've been watching too many episodes of The Bill
I work for a construction company that has been involved with HS2, whilst it’s calmed down somewhat on the last few years at one point I regularly had to be bused on to certain sites under security and on occasion police protection. I’ve been screamed at, had eggs thrown at my car and spat at just for who I work for. It’s never once demoralised me (scared me at times yes) and nor has any of my colleagues ever mentioned it has them either. If we and many other companies which have had similar protestors to deal with can manage to disconnect from actual real life abuse I’m sure DTG are thick skinned enough to be able to ignore a few nasty words on line.
The problem is, from the cheap seats over here, DTG also seem to be ignoring the polite, constructive and well reasoned feedback too. And it’s inevitable the collapse of Metro Rivals, the lack of support for TSC and seemingly increasing lacklustre support for TSW is going to raise concerns about the state of the company by paying customers. To paraphrase a quote from the movies, “Welcome to the layer cake son.”
That's my main gripe at the moment. Right now, on the feedback forums especially: If I post some issue I have no idea if it has been noticed/acknowledged by someone who is in position to do something about it. In connection with the duration it currently seems to take to fix about anything, this takes away my motivation to post any issues at all. Once again, TSG shows how it should be done. They are usually very responsive in the feedback forums of their works, and seek a dialogue with the community. Just look at the forums for the E94 pack or the BR145. This I'd love to see more often from DTG too
Yes and Grump Dog has been equally active in his relevant release feedback threads. The CMs say they read them but don’t have time to acknowledge the fact which given even a simple like to show it’s been logged would go some way to atleast letting us know we are being listened to and takes nano seconds.
These CM messages that issues have been logged usually only happen once per thread anyway, so they feel equally pointless. I mean, would it blow the budget if a CM would go through a feedback thread, let's say, once a week and then post a short list of which new issues have been logged? Would show the community that they are being listened to. Feedback goes both ways. Although I have to admit this would work the more... demanding... part of the community into a frenzy. I can already see the usual trolls jumping up and down their keyboards if some logged issue hasn't gotten fixed within 3 workdays.
I've said in the past, I do wish that the opening post in each official feedback thread was updated regularly with a list of known issues that have been raised, and their status (i.e. 'under investigation', 'fix in testing', 'QA cleared for next available patch', etc.). Otherwise giving feedback just feels like so much shouting into the wind.
SimRail do something like this in their Bug forum. They will actually mark items as open, label duplicates or note if not regarded as a bug. They are then updated as necessary. Without wanting to cause any upset this is exactly what the large establishment of CM’s should be doing.
Even if they had an extra reaction just "acknowledged" or just drop a helpful react. Just something because as said you just don't know what's recorded and what wasn't When the ROG 37 came out I was in the feedback thread on day 1 or 2 saying there was no journey mode and asking about that. But it wasn't until weeks later someone else mentioned it on the forums Matt popped up and went "We weren't aware of that, will get it sorted immediately" and there have been a few instances of this over the years.
I think this is one of the main concerns people have, DTGs lack of communication and sometimes even acknowledgement of an issue that upsets the majority of the player base, a simple thread as mentioned above would help alleviate a lot of bad feeling, even if said thread said such and such an issue is going to take a while to fix due whatever reason, i personaly would feel more listened even if i had to wait for a fix, and surely this would benefit DTG themselves having a central point where detected bugs could reside, you can even expand on this and hold polls on what fixes the community would like addresses soonest.
