It has been a few months since Rush Hour has released for TSW2. It's ultimate goal was to get routes and stations to feel as lively and possible. Rush hour passengers included improved variety in colors of outfits, variety of clothing during different seasons, dioramas, and most importantly an increased density of passengers during peak travel periods. Although all of these things are a great start towards improved passengers, there are still numerous flaws and issues I have with rush hour passengers. I will be talking about my issues with rush hour passengers and things that can be done to make them more immersive. THE ISSUES WITH RUSH HOUR PASSENGERS The following are issues I currently have with the rush hour passengers. Issues that ruin the immersion of passengers. LACK IN DIFFERENT PASSENGER MODELS I'd like to start off by saying that DTG definitely did a good job with giving variety to the coloring of people's clothing, hair, and skin color. However, even though there is a decent variety in colors, every passenger still looks the same because there are only like 3-5 different passenger models and about 5-8 different outfits for passengers to wear. I still tend to find 3 of the same people (just with different colors) walking together and it just looks really weird. PASSENGERS WALKING TO PLATFORM WAY TOO LATE Now Matt said in a couple different streams leading up to rush hour that passengers would walk onto the platform at least a couple minutes before the arrival of your train. However, this does not feel like the case at all. Whenever I am pulling into a station such as Boston Back Bay, I see all of these passengers walking down the stairs walking up to my train. Very few of them actually get on the train since most of them are still just trying to get to my train, but don't make it as I then have to depart. PASSENGERS WALKING TOO CLOSE TO TRACKS It is very common to see passengers walking near the edge of the platform. This is definitely unrealistic as most passengers have enough common sense to not go beyond the yellow line. NUMEROUS BUGS Rush Hour passengers are very bugged. The 2 most notable bugs I've seen with rush hour passengers is passengers exiting off the wrong side of the train and falling onto the tracks, and passengers constantly running into each other and walls, causing them to look all glitchy. I see this a lot, especially on NEC Boston-Providence. It just makes the passengers feel a lot less realistic clumsily running into other passengers and objects and is a pretty big immersion killer. There are also lots of minor visual bugs such as women wearing skirts having their legs going through them while walking. HOW TO IMPROVE RUSH HOUR PASSENGERS Here is a list of features that could be implemented to make rush hour passengers more immersive and realistic. CHILDREN, TEENS AND SENIORS This is probably the most requested feature for rush hour passengers. As I mentioned before, there is a lack in variety in passenger models. Everyone is also relatively the same height. Having children, teen and senior models would definitely help with adding variety. PASSENGERS INTERACTING WITH ONE ANOTHER To add on to my suggestion above, I think passengers interacting with each other would be cool. From parents holding their children's hand, to people looking like they are talking to each other, this would make passengers look a lot more lively and human like, and not look like everyone is independent just trying to get to work. LUGGAGE FOR PASSENGERS This is yet another highly requested feature. A mix of people bringing suitcases, backpacks, purses, and small carriage bags would also add more variety to passengers. Especially on a route like Brighton Mainline where many people are taking the train to get to and from Gatwick Airport, this would add a lot of immersion to passengers. DTG did mention that they wanted to do this, but didn't due to some sort of roadblock. UMBRELLAS FOR RAINY CONDITIONS Adding on to my suggestion above, it would be really cool to see people holding umbrellas and some wearing clothing with hoods when you are playing under rainy or snowy conditions. This would make picking up passengers at stations while it is raining a lot more immersive. MORE OUTFITS AND PASSENGER MODELS Adding on to my first issue with rush hour passengers, there is a lack in variety for passenger models, outfits, and hairstyles. This is something that definitely needs to be improved in a future update for rush hour passengers. DTG should add 5-10 more male and female passenger models to reduce the likelihood of similar passenger models walking alongside each other. IMPROVED ANIMATIONS The animation for passengers is very poor. Everyone walks and behaves the same. I personally really dislike the new stair animation for passengers. It looks really weird and unnatural. Everyone also walks the same and do the same standing poses. The animations really make the passengers feel like robots which is why DTG really needs to work on improving the animation for passengers as a whole. BONUS I decided to add a small bonus that isn't necessarily related to rush hour passengers. It would be really cool to see railfan dioramas along all routes. In countries like the US, railfanning is HUGE. It is very common to see railfans with cameras and phones out watching trains fly by at various stations. Many also like to railfan at railroad crossings. Having randomized railfans along every route would be a really cool and nice little touch to all routes. The introduction to rush hour was definitely a good start towards improving passengers as a whole. However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to make passengers as immersive as they can possibly be. Hopefully we see a rush hour passengers core update sometime in the near future. If you guys have your own suggestions or issues you have with rush hour passengers, feel free to post a comment down below.
Indeed, the outfits and volume improvement was amazing and i love it. But the passengers looks very the same indeed, they tried to do that with Rush Hour but bc of lack of time they cannceld that... I would love if they try again and make it work, not necsarry sort of route bundle thing like Rush Hour was but just an core improvement, it will take lot of time indeed but it makes it more immersive
