Enough Is Enough!!!

Because of short term gains over sustainable, long term growth. Sadly, the decisionmakers at the company are clearly not thinking over the long term, as seen by past events.

 

Conglomeration consternation

 

Because DTG were already in a precarious situation - and Focus were rising at that time. RailSimulator.com, the company name of DTG, was a private company, and its founder and CEO decided to sell it and to retire. DTG wouldn't have survived on their own anyway, with only the train simulation niche. Everything else they touched was doomed, Flight Sim World, the countless Fishing rebrands, and Catan seems dead and left full of bugs also now, at least it's irrelevant.

 

The problem with getting bought out by a large company is its a double edged sword. Sure, if the company remains successful it means that your division can be supported to a certain extent by bigger, more successful divisions, and thus lower the bar you need to clear. However the exact opposite can happen too, where a successful division gets screwed over because everything else around it is crumbling apart at the seams.

To bring up a extremely recent example, Insomniac, the Sony studio behind the Rachet & Clank series, and the recent Spider-Man games, among others, are being pressured into doing layoffs. This is despite the fact they've had fairly quick turn around times for projects compared to other studios under Sony, and the Spider-Man series being some of the best selling games of their respective years. But when you consider Sony has other issues going on, mainly that multiple live services games are being delayed, and the cancelation of Naughty Dog's multiplayer The Last of Us game, the layoffs start to make more sense.

 

My hope with Focus buying Dovetail is that they are collaborating with dev teams on other Focus games to improve TSW as well as other Focus Interactive titles. All parties can benefit from the free sharing of information and ideas.

I'm not that familiar with the development of other Focus Entertainment titles. Are many other Focus titles using Unreal Engine?

I don't know why Dovetail continue to try and fund a studio on niche titles, they need something with more wide spread appeal in order to fund these pet projects. If you look at a game like Powerwash Simulator, it's simple, easy to pick up, not exactly a "simulator", but still fun to play. The same could be said for Lawn Mower Simulator from DTG Partner Skyhook Games. I think they took a simple idea and made it more appealing for the masses. The development cost on these two projects can't be much compared to the level of return they offered, and now Skyhook are able to spend a little more development money on trains and we get a massive MML update while Dovetail struggle to keep up with bug fixes.

FSW was the least niche of the group but Flight Sim World was competing with FSX (which they also sold) which was released over 10 years after FSX originally came out. The writing was on the wall, they couldn't build a product better than FSX plus the many years of addon support from many parties. It's one of the same reasons someone picks TSC over TSW, among other reasons.

 

What killed FSW was the new MSFS.

 

Paul Jackson also left, and many others, according to publicly available documents, many resigned a few months ago.

 

Which could mean nothing more than that they made a pile of cash selling their DTG stock to Focus, and decided it was beach-and-margarita time.

 

This! TSC is really gotten to a point after ten years, that there is almost everything in the game, that I could have ever dreamed. I have so much untouched stuff, that I bought in sales and never got round to use because of my main focus beeing routebuildung. Speaking of routebuildung: that alone would keep me enterained for years. My current project could easily be expanded another 100 miles and afterwards I have ideas for at least two other routes, that I would like to build. The great thing is: I can easily share all this with the community and hundreds, maybe thousands, can enjoy my work.

TSC seems to moving towards a second life with the AP Skypack, RW Enhancer and the core updates DTG has been doing. Third Party and Freeware is also alive and well and producing lots of stuff. ATS said on the X-mas stream, that they have been seeing lots of new players coming in, sales are going well. I am also seeing lots of new members on Railsim as of late, asking beginner questions.

 

What is your current project?

 

Harzbahn 2000. A thread about the project can found on Railsim. Phase 1 should be out by March 2024. I was going to make an announcement about it in the TSC area of these forums, when it gets closer to release.

 

Great. I'm just installing Thueringer Wald v1.1 from rail-sim.de. Keep TSC alive

 

As I said earlier

 

Look they added trespassing passengers! /s

 

Those paper trees on the blank hills look terrible......

 

Are you trying to say that power washing and lawn mowing is somehow more appealing than trains and planes? lol

There is no issue with being a studio mainly focusing on simulators. It's a nice title to hold, to be the studio behind small, niche topics that bring joy to people of various hobbies. The only problem is that everything they do seem to be rushed and often half-assed, resulting in a mediocre end product that can't sell well enough, even if the potential would be there. DTG's only enemy is their own unwillingness to go that extra mile to properly finish their products.

I mean look at TSW as a whole. It was extremely promising, but it fell apart very quickly at the beginnign when they started selling add-ons with low rolling stock variety and decided to not offer an editor with their game. This resulted in most people in the train simulator hobby staying with TSC, Trainz, Run8 and the like. Because those game already had editors, good rolling stock variety, etc. For the big train simulator nerds who are already used to TSC and Trainz graphics, the shiny graphics of TSW alone won't be enough to make them switch over if the new game can't provide enough variety and realistic operation.
Were they to offer a public editor from the start, and if they kept making routes with good rolling stock variety (SPG came with 3 locomotives, GWE with 2 EMUs and 1 locomotive), much more people whould have left TSC and Trainz to switch over to TSW. I mean I remember when TSW originally released, many people started making new models in hope of switching over to TSW - but the TSW editor never came at the time, so people gave up on the franchise and kept playing TSC.

 

Both are DTG games

 

Nope. TSC was originally a Kuju game. Sure, after that RSDL (DTG) took over with some of the old members from Kuju, but since then I would assume most if not all members of the old team has left. The people who made Rail Simulator (TSC) are not the same people who developed TSW.

What's funny is that they made the new team after Kuju exactly because they wanted to continue developing the game, while the higher ups didn't. So they formed RSDL (DTG) to properly finish their game and continue support. They originally cut ties with Kuju and EA, yet recently they keep behaving more and more like EA - I do find it a bit ironic, it's like the company is really out of touch with their own past selves.

Though I do like what they are doing with TSC currently with the whole code overhaul, aiming to increase stability and performance.

 

Are you completely missing the point I made that these games produce more PROFIT? lol

 

I get that, but they do so because they are actually good games for what they are trying to achieve, I assume. Though I don't know these games really well, but since you brought them up, I assume they are successful.

 

I bring them up because they both have been bought by Sony and Microsoft to offer on their subscription services, which is normally death for large games relying on high priced sales. These smaller games gained exposure from their inclusion in those services and their lower price tag made it easier for people to pick up and try if you didn't have those services.

The only Dovetail Game that's offered via PS is the now dead(?) fishing series. They have 1 hour trials for Catan and TSW4, but those don't seem to be moving the needle that much IMO.

They gave away the base TSW2 for free via Epic Games for a brief period, but I don't think the game is appealing enough to the masses to find the large audience they hope for. You don't steer, you just accelerate and brake along a static route, and for a newcomer there is a steep learning curve.

It's clear based on their actions that they are always trying to branch out from trains to better diversify their studio, first with the plane products, then fishing, and currently Catan. Nothing seems to take so far, and I hope as much as they do that they produce something that catches fire and fuels the studio.

 

Train Simulator Classic was Free on Steam today - in the Search drop-down, but then when you go to the Store page it was $9.99

 

It makes sense for the game to be free, it should always be free for the base games. People who don't buy DLC after trying the base game were probably never going to buy DLC anyway.

I have another title called Pinball FX where the game is free and comes with a few tables to try for free, with the rest being available through DLC. It is a model that has been successful for them for quite a while and I think virtual pinball is a niche title like train simulation is.

If you're debating free routes to include I think the TSW2 base routes are good options, but the Rush Hour routes would be even better!

 

If the base game is free, the developers don't get paid for their work. Some games don't have any dlc at all or have it very rarely.

 

But TSW does.

 

TSW could have the base game free with the training centre and a rotating sample of trains each time you load the game.

 

Good point, DTG could really open up one route for everyone for one week, constant rotation. Because buying these unfinished pieces of code is not something I want to do.

 

I think a partial reason was also that 3rd party developers laughed at DTG's attempt to funnel all content through themselves as they do with TSW 3rd party content. Flight simulation 3rd parties were far too large at the time to be bamboozled like this.

 

They don't even need to open up the full route, but rather a sample of what could be.

 

Following developments at the time on various flight sim forums the overarching impression was that DTG lacked the expertise to produce their own flight sim product. Nowhere was this demonstrated more was when they sent their PR girl to a major convention who was completely out of her depth when the tech and aviation savvy folk in the audience started throwing detailed questions at her.

One thing I don’t understand about DTG is why they haven’t got some more mainstream genres in their portfolio. A real world golf game using UE4 or UE5 perhaps, or a rally game. Recreate the magnificent Magnetic Fields Rally Championship from 1999 with every course of the GB Rally created to exact length and scale. But instead they do fishing and Catan both of which, as evident from the cries for help in the respective forum areas, seem largely abandoned.

 

FWIW I don’t think things are half as bad as the picture being painted here. I also wouldn’t read a jot into a share price, the stock market is a load of blah in my opinion, as much about people trying to make a quick buck than any real reflection on the health of a company.

I’m reasonably happy with the game I have in front of me today. The problem is that is maybe 60% down to the game and at least 40% down to mods. Were it not for them, and I was relying on the game itself as console players have to do, it might be a different picture.

The thing I find so frustrating about TSW is that it is so nearly there. It is constantly blighted by carelessness and a lackadaisical laissez-faire attitude. There seems to be no real desire to push the game forward in leaps, it’s all little steps here and there, and too often it’s one step forward two steps back. Features get added in their most very basic form to be updated at some undetermined point in the future, just so the marketing people can say ‘look at this’. The fact that it’s LOVE and doesn’t work properly never really seems to matter. Of everything that has been added in TSW 3 & 4 in my opinion only Volumetric fog has been a real positive, fault free addition. Everything else is riddled with issues and that isn’t good enough. Who thought of releasing the editor in such a state that anything people made they couldn’t cook it and share it for general use? Literally beggars belief.

FWIW I think TSW needs new leadership. Not at the board level, but the people heading up the dev team. Someone needs to drive standards, put processes in place to stop the careless mistakes and have a vision to drive the game forward. As it stands sadly I don’t believe the people doing this job have what is needed to do this. I don’t doubt their commitment to the cause, but TSW feels like a rudderless ship at times and that has to fall on the shoulders of the senior people in the dev team. Trains are not as niche as some people like to think, there is a wide market for this game and DTG need to tap much further into it. If they pull their socks up and do that TSW will be just fine. If they carry on churning out DLC after DLC riddled with bugs and relatively aimless gameplay then I’m not so sure.

Finally, I’ve been a cheerleader for TSC in the past but haven’t touched it for a few months now. I’m really struggling to understand the line that TSC is a better ‘sim’ than TSW. With TSW set up to mimic TSC the simulator experience is identical, if anything it’s maybe better in TSW. The route building is generally as good in TSW as it is in TSC. That is 100% the case where DTG’s native content is concerned. Yes I’d like to see the GSM-R scripted to work like AP’s version and the odd little thing like that, but generally the TSW locos and units are far more AP levels than they are DTG TSC standard. The biggest win for TSW, and the thing I find most painful about TSC, is having to trawl the net for good scenarios, reskins and so on. It’s a total ballache and puts me off playing it if I’m honest.

 

As I said earlier in this thread last night, coming back to TSW (and TSC too) after enduring an hour or two of the Japanese cab video sim was like putting on an old pair of familiar walking boots, rather than the new ones which scrape the skin off your heel. Fully agree all TSW needs is a bit more discipline and focus at the top of the production tree, whether that is the choice of the actual routes and trains which get made, fighting harder to get new licenses in place or motivating those on the coalface to go the extra distance towards quality. No other sim can beat TSW where the all day timetable is concerned or the ability to feel part of an actual world rather than driving a flat 2D screen.

 

A perfect illustration of the sort of thing I’m talking about is the ever-illuminated cab light on the 465, or the broken lighting LOD on the 700. These are easy fixes that can literally be done in seconds yet they just get left. The person or persons responsible for the oversight and planning of the game should have been all over that and had it sorted straight away. It always baffles me that patch lists are full of a lot of nothing, of fixes for things that very few people had even noticed but the big and really obvious stuff like the cab light never gets touched. The native route of the 465 has been updated and extended at least 4 times, yet that bug just gets left. The attitude that creates that culture is the problem, it cascades down from the top and it needs to change. TSW is forever destined to flatline until it does. This stuff should never be accepted by those in charge.

With all of that said, TSW is still a good game and is so very nearly an excellent game. At moments it hits those highs but not consistently enough and that is the fundamental problem. It should never be a lottery for the customer as to what they’re going to get with each £30 purchase.

FWIW I have zero concerns about DTGs and TSWs future, particularly if they step-up their standards.

 

Give TSW random routing and signalling, have a stronger QC and don't allow 3rd parties to produce stuff as bad as West Cornwall and Edinburgh to Glasgow. Also the hype feels constant. WoW look at this etc. Get some people in who understand what enthusiasts like and know. Stop telling us it's hard to produce content after 7 years of doing it. The staff turnover must be so high in that case with everyone learning all the time. TSW has some serious capability, harness it and stop trying to make us feel grateful evrytime some reskin gets released or a train passes another.....

 

THIS!

Another pearl was the "Chemical Plant" scenario fix on DRA which wasn´t even a bug (other than an ordinary 12 minutes wait on a red for prototypical Falschfahrbetrieb) while the famous BR143 Introduction bug (the real breaker) was left alone.

Dresden Riesa: Permanent Red At Training Module Of Db 143

It´s my impression that DTG lost completely control over their act. So much that they can´t even risk to release relevant bug fixes because only the IT Gods know what will be broken afterwards. This piece of software is messed up beyond repair. It´s quicksand and DTG knows it.

As a double frustrated console user I agree on many foreposter´s statements that a considerable re-organization of the studio´s dev supervision and WoW is called for. Otherwise the mess will only get deeper with every release. And yes, that includes slaughtering some holy cows.

 

I know that, the TSC core was actually done by the same crew that did the original MSTS.

My point is TSC and TSW are not competing, as DTG sells both of these games. If you buy TSC or TSW DLC doesn't matter. So the point if TSC players went over to TSW is not really important - as both are DTG games.

 

Ah, but if people turn from TSW to TSC and vice versa, one would be less profitable.

 

The point of TSW is attracting new players, I think. A bigger audience, especially console gamers. If they had wanted it to be a TSC follow up they would have ceased TSC development in 2017. It's a different game for a different audience.

 

No its not for a different audience its for a larger one. All of us have 1 thing in common, liking / loving trains. Whether you play on PC or Console it doesnt matter. TSW is kind of a TSC follow up in the sense most of the routes we have are recycled from TSC. I honestly doubt DTG reads the suggestions and discusses them. Its all about them

 

This can be argued about.

I am a TSC player, and it offers much more in terms of routes and stock, and creative tools. There's no restrictions, you can make your own consists and are not limited to what DTG gives you.

From the very first time I played CSX:Heavy Haul, I wondered why I couldn't run any consist I want down the grade, and it was clear that's a different experience and does not offer what TSC offers. (Let alone the randomness in AI traffic in a TSC QuickDrive). And even when Scenario Planner came, I was restricted to short consists. It's not a game that lets me do what I want, and TSC does.

And - the creation tools are accessible. That's why you have content from all around the world, many freeware routes being of better quality than the DTG routes. The TSW PC Editor is only for specialists.

So choose what you want - if it's TSC or TSW, the money goes to DTG anyway.

 

TSW is closed off and it isnt doing it any good. Its so limited and boring. 1 train per route DLC, and if none of your other trains layer onto that route then you have got yourself a very boring 40 minute route that doesnt start / end in a terminus with 1 singular train. Not to mention the bugs that will come with the route and/or train. The same bugs that will never be fixed. Or if DTG attempt the fix them they will just break something else in the process. Them releasing a renamed version of the game every year with miniscule changes is hiliarous to me, this time they promised us suspension and other stuff, ive purchased the game only to be told oh no sorry lovely you will get it in january

 

I'm sure now, that it was Focus that pushed for advertising these features and TSW4, as they needed immediate cashflow to pay their bills, by preorders as their shares alread went down.

TSW4 wasn't a "new" development, it was a development snapshot that was released, changing the UI a little, making a UI for the runtime timetabling commands that already existed and GodMode used, for making the "FreeRoam" feature.

Suspension wasn't ready for release, as was the Editor, that still can't export you work. They HAD to release it because it was ordered by Focus. But it backfired, judging by all the numbers out there, TSW4 is the least popular version they've released so far, and did not fulfill expectations.

PS players couldn't play the game they preordered for months properly, and still there's content missing.

 

The downfall of TSW is on the horrizon and DTG and Focus have done it to themselves.

 

This is true. I may have just bought another Lego train "for my daughter", which is what I told my wife

 

Point still stands. Dtg still need money to run as a business. If everyone got each tsw for free and dlc didn't release for a few months, dtg would be at a big financial loss and the developers wouldn't get paid for their work

 

I don’t honestly see that happening…

 

Except when it comes to stuff like steam...

 

If they dont get their act together it will

 

Maybe, but except Simrail there aren't any modern train simulator out here... And Simrail is multiplayer (Different players than TSW) and also Poland isn't very exciting in contrast with the UK or US

 

Not really sure where you're seeing that lol.
Increasing amounts of third parties joining up does not read as "Downfall".