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

That'd be nice, but I think even if DTG actually wanted to go that way, as on TSW you're able to wander around and board any train you see they can justifiedly be fearful of, at least on PC, modders finding a way to unlock them for people to drive them for free.

Played SimRail only a few times, so might be wrong, but you can't leave the cab right?

 

But think of people who want to play TF3 on Windows XP!

(I jest, but I am pretty sure one of my retro gaming PCs running XP has a socket AM3+ Opteron that supports AVX2)

 

I'll tell you one scary thing: DLC is already available on PC at a 100% discount on some sites. The downsides of an open platform (for the publisher): For the PC, absolutely nothing will change, we'll all just save disk space.

 

The Xbox Series and PS5 GTA V sells single player as a DLC for GTA Online also...

 

Wasn't the purpose of the Training Center that DLC Locos would attach to it rather to a specific route? Like this it would be usable to every other route? But I could be wrong. In anyway this would or should make it easier to layer locos to certain routes, shouldn't it?

 

Just popped back in after taking a break since TSW3 to see whats changed aside from the number on the front, but saw this about SimRail and thought it might help to reply to it.

You can leave the cab in SimRail but with some conditions. You can leave to walk around platforms, the track and other areas outside of teh train, also around signal boxes etc which you can run in simrail. From memory also inside the engine bays of locomotives. Carriages just have fixed perspectives which you can cycle through. I havent been in SimRail for a year or two either tbh though and I know theres been a few updates since then..

 

From its inception all the loco training modules now take place at the training center. Stuff from before TSW3 still has its training take place on the actual route.
I still think there's money to be made from putting some passengers on the platforms of the stations at the training centre or some freight wagons to shunt around on there and charging a tenner as a TSW Light. There's electric, steam, diesel, passenger, metro, freight and shunting to be had there. Customise the rolling stock with your own livery. Heck create some scenarios like sending the A3 out to retrieve a broken down unit on one of the passenger loops etc. Could be a little more involved than getting talked through the process of driving round to one station and then doing the next step yourself. Show how to shut down these units as well.
Of course that then runs the risk of exposing people to their borked passenger AI before they can get them to buy a route, but it's not the worst idea in the world.

 

I disagree. I appreciate the amount of free stuff there is for Transport Fever, but they simply do not compare to trains made for TS and TSW. Wagons are easy to do in TS and TSW, but locomotives aren't. If you want a loco to be good, you need to have a lot of advanced knowledge of the games. Trains in Transport Fever are not in depth at all, and obviously don't need a simulation to be set up. There's a reason why a steam train mod for TF is free and a PLD Merchant Navy Class costs money. It's pretty obvious, which is why I don't understand when people compare them.

 

If you thought the menu already was bright. DTG has decided to make the LOADING SCREEN brighter too.

What a bizarre choice, especially with criticisms already on accessibility...

 

What I find particularly strange is that even though the UI design has raised pressing accessibility concerns, Dovetail Games have to have a chit-chat to try determine the best way forward for a simple colour change....yet in the blink of an eye somebody modded a dark mode that pretty much resolved the problem overnight. No whiteboards or powerpoint presentations....just a bit of common sense and a little spare time!

 

I think they need to get a chalkboard installed first. The very bright background interface might have been born due to it being presented on a whiteboard.

 

So... has anyone taken the plunge with TF3 yet? It actually turns out, after running CPU-Z my old processor does support AVX2. However the Steam forum for the game already has several reports of people being unable to launch it, or running very sluggishly even on high end systems. So going to wait a while - the 10% discount for TF2 owners is on until 13 October anyway.

 

No. It looks awesome but completely out of reach for Steam Deck. Happy to wait 'til it comes out on console though.
In the meantime I'll stick with the Road Trip DLC for ATS....£6.79 is a very unexpected bargain..

 

Yes, running really well for me. I am running a fairly high end PC though.

Only issue is that I haven't really got a clue what I'm doing. I used to play Railroad Tycoon for hours back in the day, so I'm sure I'll get into it.

 

And I thought it's just a launch discount, being this small (as that was the launch discount for TF2). I can wait for a longer while. It might be -20% off in the winter sale. From new games I'll probably get Nivalis instead now anyway, which 10% launch discount is also running until 13 Oct, that additionally multiplies with another 10% off from a "loyalty" (complete the set) bundle with no ending time set - that in the end gives me for it around 1/3rd of the price of a single TSW route. I'll just wait for more reviews, videos, or maybe even some patch before getting it, as it also seems to have some performance issues for some people. Maybe it's a habit from the ancient times when Steam didn't offer refunds, but I never buy and refund there - if I buy something on Steam, it stays in the library.

For some train action now, route planning/building and making money from transporting things, I have Infinite Rails, which despite being still rather basic in content and feature completeness, I've played it already longer than both TSW4 & TSW5 altogether (I still haven't installed neither TSW6 nor TSW7).

 

Think that might be my play too. To be honest I fired up TF2 earlier and found myself getting a bit bored after 20 minutes. It's a slow burner and you really have to put the time in. Road Trip will give some more instant gratification and of course there's the SimRail diesel which is actually tomorrow.

Or 40% off by Easter or next summer...

 

I think a lot of people need to check out OpenLoco.

 

honestly, I had really high hopes for Union Workshop. During TSW4s time, this routes scenery blew me and many others away, we thought we were going to get a new standard on how routes should be developed.

Then, after 1 delay, and 2 years later, we've essentially got a route that is stuck in TSW4, which hasnt met the expectations that we were all hoping as a community.

Its almost as if this route got developed for a year, then just left on the shelf for 3 years, doing nothing, developing problems.

by the time TSW5 was ending and beyond in TSW6, we were getting routes that were just as good, if not better than Tadami, routes that just had more to offer in both scenery and rolling stock, and at that point, tadami had just become a background thought, something we all forgot about.

Its such a sad situation really, the first Japanese route of TSW could have been so much more, there could have genuinely been so much more hype around it if they actually exceeded the expectations of players, and totally showed us something never before seen.

I think the release of Tadami is a mix of three factors, the hype for it is just totally gone with the plethora of other routes released, the DLC being totally shelved and delayed for 3 years, and the fact that it hasn't released in a state we were all expecting 3 years of development for.

I see a lot of potential in Union Workshop, but I hope this route is a learning curve for them, to make sure that these things get put right for the players, and offer as much as possible.

I hope Union Workshops next route will turn out better, and they truly strike gold, but for now, its not delivered.

 

The thing that puzzles me most about Tadami is why even release it in the first place when it clearly still needs work? After all, TSW7 is brand new with three base routes that should keep folk happy for a while and it's not like it needed to get the jump on a similar game elsewhere, so it's kinda peculiar that Union Workshop should decide to go all in on a £30 route when there's no obvious reason to do so. Also, considering they'd spent 3 years developing this route you'd have thought that taking the decision to put it back another 2-3 months for extra polish would have been the better option if it increased the possibility of getting a healthier return on their investment.
All very odd!!

Who knows, maybe TSW7 didn't meet launch expectations and Dovetail Games were assuming that the hype surrounding Tadami might encourage more people to invest in a paid version of the game and give it a much needed sales boost! Yeah, a flimsy at best thought...but flimsy is all I've got when it comes to fathoming out decision making strategies at Dovetail Games.
<< (ps) that smilie isn't there to describe my feelings....it's showing what I have to look like when navigating the TSW menus

 

I do wonder how many people actually took the paid option this year. I didn’t (eventually) and that’s the first time since the annual rebrand became a thing. None of the routes appealed or were particularly iconic and all seem to show evidence of rushed production and poor QA. As regards Tadami, really they should have honoured the previous release date by also releasing backward compatible to TSW6.

 

Bear in mind that, barring that last-minute pull from the schedules, this wasn't meant to be the first TSW7 route, rather the last TSW6 route. And I think by this stage DTG just wanted it out of the door for a number of reasons, not least to prove that it actually existed and wasn't vapourware; also so that they could finally take it off the roadmap!

There's no reason to think another 2-3 months would have made the route any better, if what we're seeing is the outcome of 3+ years of development.

 

I like the look of Airedale and Wharfdale, but don't like what a pig TSW7 is. Between that and my routes suddenly disappearing I wonder whether to go back to TSW6 or leave TSW alone for a bit and start using the hard drive space it'd free up for more fighting games.

 

well, one way to describe the KiHa 40s sounds is as trainsimulatordriver describes it;

"The engine sounds were recorded using a microphone that was in a tube of toilet paper, and i think its played back lovingly and carefully on two cans and a wet piece of string"

 

As a mid term release, A&W might have worked bit never struck me as iconic enough for a keynote project. That plus ongoing quality issues.

Like you, since moving on to TSW7 I have drastically curated my DLC collection to make room for other stuff I want to play. At this point, the TSW balloon has well and truly deflated for me.

 

I installed my UK routes and loco packs, but they keep disappearing from the menu whenever I'm on it. I really should change the record about it because I'm sure people are sick of hearing about it but it's really disconcerting when I quit the game to go and see whether one of the routes I want to play is installed because it's not listed in the menu, then when I go back into TSW7 another 9 have disappeared from the list.

 

I'm also trying to decrease the amount of installed DLC, however the stupid layer system is preventing me from deleting a lot of routes.

 

You can leave the cab and walk an area around your train, but you can't board other players trains. If you want to drive another train you need to do it from the main menu.

 

With the free option there is likely no way how to find out, as all players are counted the same. However, we can see that TSW7 peaked on steam to 2139 people to date, while TSW6 at the same point (29 Sep 2025) peaked to 2630. So there is another 20% player fallout. And I remember that when I was pulling TSW6 stats after it launched, it was also doing poorly compared to predecessors.

I used to be a collector, but TSW6 I just claimed free, installed it only like in December and bought the full pack in February when it was already in 60% discount. TSW7 I claimed free as well, the pack doesn't look overall interesting and with the only new content being builtin mods that I already use, there is no reason whatsoever to even install it. The only thing I would get is unusable UI, broad selection of new bugs and straight disappearing content.

 

Fair comment, but what you could also consider is that consumer confidence in the TSW brand isn't in the best place it could be from a console standpoint....and using a poor quality addon as the very first product in TSW7 isn't exactly going to do Dovetail Games any favours when it comes to trying to win back the trust of that section of gamers, is it? They're just going to see "mostly negative" on a superior platform and assume nothing has changed on the console front.

I fully understand Tadami had to get out of the door, but when you consider exactly what they're offloading to the general public there just doesn't seem to be a scenario where the 'pros' of doing so will ever outweigh the 'cons'....potentially leaving Dovetail Games in the awkward position of starting a another new TSW on the back foot.

 

I see what you're saying, but I don't think an objectively 'good' Tadami line would have won back the trust of console players - from what I can see (as a PC player it's going by this forum), only the near-total elimination of blurry textures will do that. That alone puts DTG on the back foot far more than anything to do with Tadami, since by my reckoning it's been 9 months since Matt said in a livestream about blurriness "it can't take 6 months, it just can't" (quoting from memory).

 

Have you followed the guide on compatible content and then raised a ticket if that doesn't help? Sounds like there's something that needs sorting regarding DLC entitlements.

 

In fairness if not mitigation to DTG, not the only ones this week. Transport Fever 3 seems to be gathering mixed feedback at present with some not able to run the game, or running sluggishly. The much anticipated Road Trip for ATS also seems a rare slip for SCS. Poor physics and handling, the cars have no weight or inertia, feel like when you’re in OMSI 2 trying to use the joypad. Sound is standard SCS FMod slop and bulletin board missions broken with no icon at the pick up point. That leaves the SimRail diesel loco this evening to pick up the slack.

 

Yeah, you're probably right...but nonetheless, releasing a better presented Tadami might also have given console gamers a little more belief that quality is at the forefront of Dovetail Games' minds for TSW7. As it stands though, folk are just going to look at Tadami and think to themselves that nothing will ever change and further dismiss a product that they already had little faith in.

It probably matters little anyway because I firmly believe that Dovetail Games have burned all their bridges with the console version of TSW and it's going to take an awful lot more than a couple of decent routes and reduced/resolved blurries to convince people that things will be consistently better in the future. You could even argue that they're already aware of that and (judging by a very noticeable shift in platform priority of late) are taking steps to ensure a more appealing product on PC in order to compensate for reduced interest levels elsewhere..

 

Yup, I've noticed that too. Not only does every vehicle feel exactly the same (identical physics, different skins?) but a combination of twitchy controller handling with no FFB and a hopelessly broken (steering) linearity curve makes driving a right old chore. It's a great concept though (a 'sensible driving' version of The Crew 2) and I'm sure SCS will sort things out pretty quickly.

 

I will probably rebuy it once the issues are addressed. In the meantime, the BR285 for SimRail has arrived in my collection, nice price just under £11 (think they do a few days on and after release with a discount, unlike DTG), so looking forward to getting going with that after dinner!

 

Simulating cars and trucks is very different obviously. I haven't played the Road Trip DLC, but I can imagine they'd need to do a lot of work to get it to feel right. The developers have obviously not had anywhere near the amount of time Polyphony Digital and Turn 10 / Playground have had developing car physics models. And IIRC the trucks in Forza didn't handle very well because the physics engine wasn't designed for it, so I guess it goes both ways.

 

Contrast Hello Games. Buy No Man's Sky, once, and ALL DLC thereafter is free

 

Dear those who get riled about the amount of time it takes to download the annual TSW reissue.....

I've just opened up MSFS 24 for the first time in a couple of months. Last time I was in it, I spent five hours downloading content updates and didn't have time to reconfigure my yoke and actually fly a plane.

With winter approaching, I'm now going to get back into flying, I thought I'd boot-up the flight sim and get it all ready for a trip at the weekend and.....68gb of updates to content. That's around 10 hours of downloading that'll have to run overnight. That doesn't include 15gb of third party content that's queued for updates outside of the main game. TSW is a piece of cake by comparison.

 

I installed WRC9 offline from disc out of curiosity (to see what the pre-retail version looked like) and discovered that all except one of the vehicles sold as post-launch DLC were freely available to drive on the disc version....they'd 'day one' patched them out of the game to sell at a later date. Very naughty!

 

Fun fact about SimRail and it’s DLC. In the depot you can preview not purchased comtent like new locomotive etc. You can go in the cab or engine room.
It is nice thing that we can check something before buy.

 

Unfortunately the SimRail diesel is not without a few issues. There is no visible exhaust smoke even under full power. There throttle becomes unresponsive after a stop and requires jiggling back and forward into dynamics before it would work. Loading into a saved game it didn’t work full stop and the reverser was also broken. There’s also a weird scuffing sound loop in the running sounds.

So all in all a pretty dour week for our transport themed releases. The poor quality Tadami, TF3 with its performance issues and the less than sterling Road Trip for ATS!

 

The BR285, meets requirements of the eco directive for European union. So thats why no smoke

 

Wallet marked safe then for now unless they patch it. More dough for the model trains.

 

Do your model trains smoke then?

 

Interesting if rather boring. Hopefully their next diesel loco will be an older class with plenty of clag.
In the meantime, the supreme irony of this week's disappointments is that I'll probably find myself back in TSW grinding the monthly mastery.

 

They'd probably need to make a ST44 loco (for an exhaust under full power looking like coming from a steam loco).

 

The good old replacing dirty steamers with more ecological diesels

 

No but can resell them on, repaint and/or weather them and return them if they dont work properly.

 

I like the idea of being able to have a look around products you've not bought. In TSW it could be done in the style of a depot open day. With a mixture of traction you've not used much (a reminder of sorts), traction that's been updated recently and ones you've not bought. The little information board outside each loco/unit and associated route could be a link to the DTG shop.

Need ideas? I've got them. And some of them aren't terrible.