Going Overground (v.2) | The Goblin Discussion & Speculation Thread

That should have been (and now edited to) for what. Had music on and somehow my mind typed what I heard not saw!

I certainly expect more than bare minimum.

 

But that is immersion to some. A train passing every two minutes is something.

 

Immersion means different things to different players. The most immersive for me is being in the cab of a big American diesel with lots of controls including dynamic breaking and the need to drive up and down sharp gradients pulling 100 heavy freight cars in varying weather conditions. Or switching cars in a busy yard. Or doing pick-up freight on a short line full of factories.

Driving a one-handle lightweight emu with a narrow view of the road on a largely flat route through the center of a big city is about the least immersive it gets, partly because DTG hasn't figured out how to model urban landscapes. To me it's like driving a bus, stopping twice at every corner.

But the latter is likely the kind of low-hanging fruit we will get from TSW from now on, whether it's located in the UK, US, Europe or Asia. The commuter and his train is king.

 

But it isnt everything. Unfortunately in TSW a train passing you every 2 minutes is everything.

 

It's not everything, but it's better than nothing. It gives the routes some life.

 

Apart from things that aren't in any route, like delays and random events etc (things I would like to see), I can't understand what the issue is. The route is a reasonably busy point to point route with a fair bit of freight where it crosses some other routes where you will see AI traffic.

Pretty much most routes are the same, some might be freight only, some might be fast passenger and some a mixture, some are rural, some are urban, some are a mixtures. Train driving is just that, driving a train from somewhere to somewhere where you will pass other trains. At the most you might have some shunting or unloading of goods.

If that isn't interesting enough then maybe a train simulator isn't the right choice of past time!

Apart from the arguments about whether the route should have included more, like the NLL or be set in a different era I can't see what else one can expect from the route as produced, which is based on the route as it is in real life!

 

Well it is a case of each to their own. I like driving trains and if that is driving a heavy freight on Cajon Pass or a ICE on the German highspeed route or a class 323 on Cross City, then I enjoy it.

Either a route like GOBLIN appeals or it doesn't, to me it does but I don't just want to see routes like this, hence my frustration at the steam situation and why routes like Blackpool have been a godsend.

 

Im not 1 bit interested in the era that Blackpool is set in but the reception it received made me buy it and I quite enjoy it how many months later

 

This is exactly the issue with the route choice though - there's almost no variety. Putting railtours and the like to one side, you can drive a 710 (all stops) from Barking Riverside to Gospel Oak or Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside (again all stops). If you have the right DLC you can also drive a single variety of freight locomotive from one end to the other. It's entirely predictable and no matter how well the scenery is crafted, no matter how much crossing AI is in the timetable, the gameplay loop is fundamentally comprised of two service types and that will get stale quickly.

There are many feasible UK routes which could have been made instead that contain a mix of many more service types than Goblin.

Our German friends seem to get the best deal out of this at the moment - Rosenheim is a fantastic route with a huge amount to do and is exactly what DTG should be aiming to replicate for UK content.

SEHS, Blackpool, BML are all good examples of routes where there is a lot more to do. Routes like Birmingham Cross-City fall into a kind of middle sector where although they're good routes, because the potential of the timetable was never filled out with loco DLC they haven't been as good as they could have.

This route falls into the bottom sector along with Glossop - where every passenger service is fundamentally the same, and there's no real potential to make it any more interesting.

To be quite honest we simply don't get first-party UK DLC often enough these days to justify wasting a whole production slot on a route like this when something more interesting could have been made instead. It's taken seven months since TSW4 release (which itself didn't have a particularly interesting UK route) to get these 13 miles out of the door and it's been well over 12 months since the last passable DTG UK route in my view.

Everything seems to be either of disappointingly limited scope (this, Glossop, Peak Forest), delivered half-arsed (ECML, Peak Forest) or both. Sorry to be so down on the game at the moment (I know it's not always pleasant to read) but that's how it is for me. It hasn't always been this way - 18 months ago I was a lot more positive about TSW's future. Perhaps the penny has just dropped.

I would dread to think how I'd feel if we hadn't had at least the diamond that is Blackpool in the meantime...

 

I definitely don't want to just see routes like this. I want to see more mainlines and cross country lines with a variety of trains and certainly routes from past eras and I agree it is about time we saw another more fulfilling UK route from DTG.

However I still enjoy routes like this. Alongside routes like Glossop, Cross City, Cathcart, IOW, Bakerloo, each one offers something different. In this case a new train and urban London scenery. These are often routes which feel realistic as you get a complete route not half a route or a route which starts and/or stops in an odd location. ECML would have been one of my top UK routes if it had gone to York or even more so if the Kings Cross to Peterborough section had been released, however for me Peterborough to Doncaster is odd, it doesn't feel real. The route and train are nicely modelled but I rarely play it because of its scope, same with MML for that reason.

From the beginning the German routes have been better connected, partly because of the way the railway system is in Germany. I agree Rosenheim is a fantastic route and I am looking forward to Semmeringbahn. I think Fife Circle will likely be one of the best UK route releases.

I am not saying by any means only make routes like GOBLIN, that is the last thing I want but also I personally wouldn't dismiss a route like this. We all get different things out of TSW. Maybe the next DTG UK route which is on the roadmap will be more comprehensive.

 

For me immersion means to discover that real railroad procedures doing by my self are easier than in a Sim over a keyboard.

 

I'm not gonna get involved with the big discussion going on in here.. I'm just going to ask my own question and go, I'm not good with arguments/discussions at all.

Anyway - my question is: what kind of freight services will there be, where will they start and end and what kind of workings will there be? (Intermodal, aggregates, petroleum etc)
Thanks to anyone who replies!

 

I agree with quite a lot with what The Organist is saying, but this right here is a good summary of the overall issue.

I’m not going to take away ECML, despite some drawbacks, I have played it more than I thought I would have. But for DTG to deliver that & then only the Goblin line, in the same rough period of time we are getting BPO & Fife Cirlce, I don’t think it’s good enough (in terms of content delivery).

We have another UK route from DTG in 4-6 months & in all honesty I’m braced for another EMU experience. DTG have & are still are setting a worrying trend for UK content.

I have said before that a lot of problems in UK content is caused by the lack of rolling stock, however the likes of Skyhook with their MML HST & 158, Rivet & Skyhook collaborating to bring us a 170 & new 158 etc - are actively pushing that issue back. DTG on the other hand seem to be purely focused on finding routes that have 1 EMU & a passable 66 layer.

DTG IMO just seems to have ran out of imagination.

 

I do agree with this and with what Mattwild was saying too. Maybe the relative lack of recent DTG UK content is making me more excited about GOBLIN than I would normally be. Glossop was supposed to be a filler route, I suppose in a sense it was and maybe Goblin is too but for what. DTG had the imagination to bring us steam and routes like Peak Forest yet that has now been abandoned. I also fear that modern electrified routes are going to be the norm from DTG. I do have some hope they will surprise us, they seem to be bringing more varied German and other European content.

Maybe DTG feel that with the amount of UK third parties now involved that they don't need to be so innovative, although I feel if they do think that, then that is misguided. I suspect the ATS route will be a modern route, Rivets routes are generally modern routes, so that would basically leave Just Trains, if they carry on in the same vein that they did with the Blackpool route. A lot of their content for TSC if not most has also been set in modern times, I was pleasantly surprised when I found out the Blackpool route would be set in 1986.

 

I am not particularly knowledgeable regarding freight, well modern freight but the GOBLIN and NLL interconnect a few mainlines. I imagine freight from ports like Felixstowe traverse the route. It is presumably a good corridor to get freight from the west country or south Wales and south Midlands across to the east coast and vice versa. I have watched some videos and there seems to be a fair variety.

Unfortunately in the sim I imagine you will take a freight from Barking and drive it to Gospel Oak and vice versa and that will probably be it really. I might produce more variety as AI traffic but probably won't be especially interesting to drive, unless there is some operations I don't know about.

Sadly freight on many routes just involved travelling from one end of the route to another, having some industry interaction as you get in TVL for example would make freight operations more interesting.

 

I think the third parties are much more inclined to make content they are personally interested in - Whereas DTG are fully embedded in their commercial conveyer belt strategy. Another issue with DTG I think is that the German content is overshadowing US & UK content so much, because they seemingly have a lot of knowledge, skill & passion from the likes of Maik & Lukas. We don’t really hear anything similar of the other counties, other than Brandon, who AFIK specialises in the NEC (which despite technical flaws, are prime US DLCs) & then the legend of scheduling Joe, who is stretched by the fact he’s probably got to work on other timetables all year round.

It’s not to say that there aren’t passionate & skilled devs behind the scenes, there obviously are - but I feel there is no one really taking the helm at DTG with UK things, and they’re just locked into a catch 22 of making modern EMU routes.

 

This is why routes like Goblin standalone don't appeal.

Just finished a run from Euston to Birmingham on WCML in TSC. Yes I had to do it over two or three sessions but you feel as if you have been on a journey. US freight also, almost certainly going to be adding Havre to Shelby to my TSC collection in the upcoming sale which fuses into Marias Pass to give a 250 mile run across Montana. Flippin' A. The Stevens Pass route in TSC is also some 120 miles in length. I'm also looking at grabbing Newcastle to Edinburgh which, while not got the best reviews on Steam, offers a long run between two logical points. DTG really need to stop making excuses for churning out these short routes and think how they can address longer routes, more trains but not charge an arm and a leg for it.

 

Oh right okay, thanks for letting me know! I'm a big freight fan so don't mind all the A-B runs but I will admit I do wish we could get more actual yards where wagons are loaded up like in TVL and ECW.. apparently this new freight pack from Skyhook will have some action like that but it's not been confirmed I don't think.

I'll definitely give the freight on this a go, I just hope they're at decent times and not ridiculously late/early - the RHTT should be quite good, maybe actually terminating and changing ends for once..? Hopefully!

 

Don't get me wrong I would love to see Euston to Birmingham in TSW even set in the current day. I can understand that for some/many GOBLIN is underwhelming as there have been quite a few routes of this ilk. I guess if we had a long route, followed by a short route in a constant pattern then the response to GOBLIN would have been different. I will still get it and enjoy it, I don't tend to look at routes individually but as a whole, as a complete experience alongside the other TSW routes, the variety which is slowly getting more varied when you look at every piece of content, recent announcement around steam aside. I would like to see a larger collection of "longer" UK routes as much as everyone else.

I only have a small TSC installation now but have been concentrating on the NWCL and I agree about it being a fulfilling experience, a complete run from Crewe to Holyhead takes a couple of hours and does feel like a complete journey.

 

Ultimately I think Goblin is smaller than a lot of us would have liked, and with the saturation of EMUs these days it’s not exactly pushing the boundaries of diversity.

The thing is however, this is a closed circuit route IRL and it is in itself a complete experience. Do I think another Overground route would have been better? Yes. Do I think if they were going with the Goblin line that they should have done it in its diesel era’s? Also yes. At the end of the day I’ve always said that end to end routes offer more than the ones that have odd sections, so I’ll give this one a fair shot & won’t write it off just yet.

I will say that it isn’t surprising RE the rolling stock. Matt did say at TSW 4 launch that they were focusing on ultra modern.

 

What an odd post. You seem to be arguing that the European commuter operations can never be as "immersive" as American freight operations, even if they're both simulated with the same degree of realism.

 

That is what the Goblin would be like for any real life driver. It's the same train, the same line. The only difference is that things may look different outwith the railway - and of course it's virtual.

Each to their own, but your immersion in US stuff is more because that's what you enjoy most (based on this post), not because the alternative is unrealistic or hard to become immersed in.

 

Depends how you look at it really. If they’re both made to the exact same standard as each other, they should both be objectively as immersive as each other.

Subjectively however, if you don’t like UK commuter routes, you’ll probably never find yourself immersed, I know I don’t feel immersed with US freight in TSW.

 

It is possible to like both but the prototype needs to be interesting. The (freeware) Virtual District Line in TSC is great as is the JT Met Line (when it doesn’t CTD). Both essentially all stops commuter EMU routes but sufficiently interesting not to get monotonous not least because both offer a network with more than one service group. Which is why, if instead of just the Goblin Line they had done the NLL too, would have happily parted with £30. If they’d integrated with the Bakerloo/ DC Line even happier especially with a Euston and Watford extension. But to use the old cliche, Goblin Line is really clutching at the low hanging fruit in terms of what a commuter route should deliver.

 

In theory it’s low hanging, but we do have to consider that DTG has fallen flat on its face whenever presented with developing an urban landscape.

There is a real possibility that Goblin is not low hanging enough for the scenery team.

 

I agree and this is why I said it would've been better to have made the Mildmay Line and Suffragette Line. Metro routes in my view are not necessarily bad routes, but the problem is long term for some players, it will get stale rather quickly since you are limited in what you can do. The Metropolitan Line is popular in TSC because of the variety of things you can do on it. The District Line in TSC is also popular. I feel if they made both London Overground lines like they did in TSC, they would've gotten more sales

 

If you really read my post, I made it very clear that this POV was my personal opinion and that everyone feels immersion differently, and I respect that.

Yes I do think DTG has run out of steam ( pun intended ) and that they seem to be developing for a much narrower audience than they did just a couple of years ago.

I mean just compare Rush Hour with recent and current output ( Blackpool aside and that wasn't even DTG ) .

Abandoning steam traction and freight are unforgivable decisions in my view.

I don't know where TSW is headed, but, as I've said in other threads, it seems to be shrinking rather than expanding its product and its target audience.
Not a good look in my very humble opinion.

I will add that there have been some interesting and well thought out posts on this thread today. If only the forum could always be this interesting.

 

It's a fact of businesses that they will be looking hard at sales figures and going for what shifts units, they probably have access to play time too and can see what people play frequently.

There will be winners and losers but I think the trend with TSW is towards modern traction, in the UK and Germany at least. With the odd British Railways era DLC thrown in. Which I'm delighted with but I can imagine the disappointment for those who love steam and freight.

I can't blame DTG for sticking to what sells. Perhaps the sales figures have shown that most steam-loving rail simmers are using TSC.

 

I agree that you can’t really blame any company for making money & taking steps to further progress that goal. Although companies need to remember that chasing the pot of gold, does have other, non fiscal costs though.

Maybe if DTG would put abit more effort into things, they wouldn’t need to worry about what TSC is offering players, where TSW doesn’t.

 

It seems that as third party involvement in TSW development has grown, DTG have narrowed their in-house DLC development to a very specific audience. They seem to be focusing on maximizing sales volume and less on expanding the TSW audience, and the truth is that modern passenger routes in the UK, US, and Germany/Austria result in the most sales. DTG will rely on third parties (and the community with the public editor) to handle the more niche and exotic stuff like new countries, backdated era DLC, steam, and freight-focused routes.

 

I imagine if you're logged into DTL they absolutely have your playtime logged among other bits of data.

Just to add looks like US content will be limited to LA Metrolink and NYC (and even that is having licensing issues) for the forseeable future.

 

GOBLIN will be the first DTG UK release since JT's Blackpool Lines which has raised the bar in terms of quality and value for money and the London Overground route gives DTG the chance to respond to the gauntlet thrown down by Just Trains.

It looks good from the screenshots, can it deliver?

PS, are they still having problems with the licence on that "Lengthy Island" US route? I thought that was nearly ready for release.

 

It doesn't matter how well Goblin is built, there is no way that a 13 mile A to B route with one emu can possibly match the route mileage and branching of Blackpool. And that's not even mentioning the varied rolling stock and gameplay that came with that dlc.

As for value for the money, there's no contest.

 

Still waiting licensor approval

 

While the US route is pending approval, perhaps even more work is being put into it in the meanwhile to ensure that this is a success

 

And watch when by next roadmap it STILL won't be announced

 

I definitely hope we get some info or screenshots of the US route by next roadmap. I have a feeling it could be a license for either the C3 bilevels or the M9 EMU's since it appears it could be Kawasaki

 

Indeed. After finishing up a couple of saved runs in TSC I found myself back on BPO yesterday evening, non stop Pacer run from Blackpool North to Preston. My interest spiked further as adjacent to me in the platform at BPN was one of the Preston Docker Railtour legs with a Class 20 top and tailed. My Lords! I know it’s not part of any Journey Mode but who can resist a Chopper Railtour. Going back in today as my priority to get started on the first leg and start working through.

 

Looking at the a.i traffic this route is not a bad choice. At least its enclosed, 1000 services with a.i. In this way not compareable with Blackpool branches.

 

Goblin wont be able to compare when it comes to replayability either

 

I disagree. 13 miles vs. 48 miles, less rolling stock additions, and a simpler timetable compared to Blackpool. Goblin may very well end up being a good DLC, but there’s no way I see it competing with the replayability and value for money of JT's Blackpool lines. If DTG really wanted to give us value for money they would’ve included the North London overground line (Richmond-Stratford) on top of the Goblin and included a 378. That's what they did for Train Sim classic. And don’t tell me DTG can't do longer passenger routes in TSW because they were able to do London-Brighton just fine.

 

It’s basically this year’s Glossop, albeit with a new train rather than a recycled one.

But even Glossop had a few longer stretches between stations, the divergent destinations at the outer end, mixed urban and country scenery plus the (sadly underutilised) Manchester Piccadilly.

 

I was actually talking about the quality of the route. This is clearly DTG's interim UK release, the first they've done since JT's which was a work of art and had an atmosphere, an intangible quality that you find in the best TSC & TSW content. I'm intrigued to see whether DTG have upped their game as a result simply from an aesthetic point of view.

The North London Line was on its own in TSC then the GOBLIN came along as an expansion pack. Maybe they're doing it in reverse this time.

 

Mostly intermodel although I have seen the odd aggregate working too

 

Ah thanks a lot! I'm intrigued as to what the services will be like, since I thought the route was an enclosed one so yeah, I guess it obviously isn't but yeah, should be good. Is there much freight usually or not?

 

There’s a hell of a lot of freight yes.

 

Good! I look forward to driving them on this route then, once I've had enough of the 710 of course!

 

…lets hope DTG do it justice then!

 

Yeah.. hopefully!

 

So is there hope they might include the freight hub right near the turn to barking riverside?

For me its a must!