Good evening Besides the rough release of the past weeks I'd like to take a moment and share a few thoughts about what I heard on the still ongoing live stream regarding the Roadmap and recent releases. I want to thank both Sam and Adam for the honest words on what happened and what is goint to happen. What I suggest for the future is the following: If you guys know that a DLC like Hamburg route is broken, because of flaws you have spotted after it has been set to release, and you can not hold it back from beeing published on 3 plattforms, please, by any means, go ahead and tell the community! We went nuts by the stuff we spotted within 10 minutes of gameplay, and now learned you knew some of these bugs already. I have full understanding that spotting errors after somethin is out of your release control, does not fix it on day one but I do not understand why no one stood up, opened a post and wrote: Dear community, we had a serious issue we are still in the process of finding out how it went into the DLC, but we were unable to withhold the release because we spotted it too late! Boom! Veryone would have known, that you are aware, that maybe there was already a solution and most of the harsh stuff written here woudl have been much much easier. But that is just my suggestion Again, thx for the honest words Sam and keep going!
Agreed, and you have to feel sorry for Sam, Adam and the teams for this backlash which is mostly out of their control. I personally didn't buy Hamburg - Lübeck as I'm waiting for the new releases to come out, and may get it in the future, however the vast majority of the things I have seen have been negative. However people need to look more on the bright side - I'm not saying critiscm is a bad thing, because it isn't - however people need to look at the positives as well. After the good reception to Clinchfield and the Class 465 this seems like quite a dip, and I hope that DTG get a fix out soon, because after all, Dovetail are balancing Three Games, One of which (TSW) is currently in the process of quite a few large projects (Steam, the Core Update, Rush Hour etc). So indeed I agree that a little post to the community could have helped ease the tension, however Sam and Adam's honestly was indeed pleasant to see.
The Roadmap stream cleared up a lot of things, and Sam and Adams honesty made me feel confident in DTG again. They do indeed see the content of last week as below their standard, and understand community concerns. They also are working on fixing things and finding out what went wrong. I feel really bad about Adam and his team getting so much criticism. Their work was still an improvement overall, and people have to understand how difficult it is to change things on an already fully built route and loco, while having to learn many new technologies along the way (the preservation crew had no or little experience with most of the big changes). Even with there being issues in the final product, I really feel that the preservation crew has put a lot of effort in the changes, and that it is worth that effort. The tranperancy shown in the stream was really good, and showed that DTG, although being a company, is motivated by more than just money, being driven by many employees that are railfans and players of the game themselves. I know it is a personal opinion, but I just think that for transperancy, directness and clarity, Sam is the best member of DTG. For me it was not until Sam adressed issues and asked tough questions that I regained trust in DTG. As I explained before on the forums, Matt's explaination of things feels lacking when Sam isn't there to push him towards a full and clear answer. I don't think Matt's explainations and reactions to things (like the line numbers missing or LZB issues) are dishonest, yet for many players saying 'I know that is wrong, I'll look into it, but won't promise anything' feels like Matt is trying to play the issue down or not understanding the frustration players have with certain bug or inaccuracies. I don't believe Matt is actually trying to play down the issue, he is very understandably not promising things he might not be able to deliver on, but repeating that same mantra over and over again does not offer player the detail they want. A little more explaination would be appreciated at times, however that creates the issue of 'how much can you tell the players without giving false impressions', and that is a line thusfar only Sam is able to consistently find. I do hope JD one day gets to the same level of experience as Sam, as it seems like he'll be mostly replacing him from now on. He has only just begun and needs to get a feel for the community (and to community a feel for him), so do take my opinion on the 'superiority' of Sam on streams with a grain of salt. All in all, I hope DTG learns their lessons, and finds out which internal processes caused these issues, as they do seem motivated to prevent something like last week ever happening again. And maybe, if HHL is fixed (mainly the PZB), and the reviews do improve, I'll consider buying it on sale sometime.
