Mannheim-kaiserslautern Is A Really Bad Route (for The Rolling Stock)

Well we don't know exactly what market research tools or other focus groups DTG or third parties use to assess potential projects, but we have a whole Suggestions forum full of ideas for German routes and I can't see that this new project was ever mentioned there. I would wager the forum here, maybe the Steam forum and Discord (which I don't personally use) represent a fair cross section of the user base.

And this forum is hardly obscure, anyone with half a brain playing TSW ought to be able to find it through a simple Google search.

They could have chosen something from Berlin, Trier to Koblenz, extended Rhine Valley to Koln or Frankfurt, done a diesel main line such as Obereruhrtalbahn or the Eifelbahn, any of which would have been far more iconic and appealing than this route.

The fact TSW is a niche product makes it absolutely vital every piece of DLC is carefully considered so it sells well to support ongoing development and is not released in an unfinished poor quality state.

 

For me FTF runs fine, on ultra settings 80-100fps on an ultrawide monitor with only some drops near Frankfurt Hbf and has never crashed. I might have a stronger PC but it's also 3 years old and not top spec for when I bought it either. moving a marker is not something I think will make it worse. if FTF as length and traffic density is the limit for now than that's ok with me. it's not a bad route in itself and if they are right that traffic causes the most performance issues, players can use the layer option to reduce said issues.

 

mean: If they would at least make changes to the rolling stock!
- We still dont have the 185.2 livery with the “new” physics and TOD 4 in the RSN livery and still get the same one as in MSB- despite the fact that in most routes it’s unrealistic with the RAILION labeling
- The TGV got an update to be at least driveable- but why not give it TOD4?
- 425 included is not the S-Bahn version
- ICE3M is not the version equipped for France

The list goes on and I’m really sad that they didn’t at least go the extra meter to improve the stock enough if they don’t want to go the extra mile…

 

Why won't they do it? Because they'll sell it anyway, at least they're convinced of it... And they'll hug and applaud.

 

Because the home route of the TGV is a TOD3 route. Giving the train the TOD4 upgrade while the route stays TOD3 doesn't seem so logical. At the end of the day the train is a layer, not part of the product.

 

And that’s the thing I’ve wondered about. The TGV might be the most interesting train running on this route since it’s a foreign high speed train winding through the curves of western Germany. Why not bring a new version of this one? Has SNCF increased the strictness on their license?

 

It's isn't even a case of DTG not wanting to add variety. The Duplex variant is completely incorrect for the route. It is the equivalent of a Great Northern 379 subbing onto SEHS.

 

I suggested this route back in 2021.

It was longer in my sugesstion going all the way to Saarbruken. And at the time we did not have the stock required.

We are going to have routes where we already have all the stock needed, that is inevetable.

I just wish we would get new Dostos or wagons in those situations. But eventually we should get routes with no new stock.

If they were to come out with another Metrolink route after the loso release we already have full stock for them so I would not expect a new loco in that situation.

 

You aren't looking hard enough then, the exact route has been suggested, along with multiple suggestions including part of the route. It isn't particularly hard to use the simple search tool on the forums and find this.

Germany has 24% of sales of tsw4 on steam, the UK is at 11%.

The UK dominated forum is not representative, sorry, but its true.

 

ngl instead of reusing the br111 again for this route dtg should have made the br120 since that train did run allot of ic services alongside the br101 over the line back in 2014 and the br425 thing reminds me of dtg doing it ith the munich br423 for koln and frankfurt

 

Fair enough re the route appearing in Suggestions then, but to anyone outside Germany it’s probably on a par with Ipswich to Ely in the UK - of interest to those who know it but not.a massive crowd pleaser.

 

I mean... yeah, exactly. Why isn't that good enough though? It's not like every single UK or US route so far has been considered a "massive crowd pleaser" by the German players.

 

I don’t think it’s so much the unheard of nature but what appears to be a poor quality build, incomplete features, no new rolling stock and the premium price tag for said experience. It cannot be denied DTG are getting sloppy and the generally poor QA we had come to expect is getting even worse, in the rush to get products out the door. I have most of the German routes in TSW (some now uninstalled) and enjoy them - even Maintalbahn. But to quote our famous forum thread, “Enough is Enough” when it comes to this one.

 

I wasn't aware you actually enjoy any DLC /s

 

Don’t be naive (or sarcastic).

As with others the reason why I am so critical of DTG is the desire to see a better product, both in terms of the core and the add on DLC.

 

The quality is not outstanding and far too many ancient buildings and scenery have been used. That is simply disappointing for TSW5 in 2025.

The vegetation is also only semi-good in some places (e.g. forests) and looks like the Left Rhine route. But admittedly still better than the Maintalbahn, which was the ultimate low point in that respect.

There is still some hope.

 

The only thing I have gleaned from this thread is that German TSW4 steam sales are more than double that of the UK. If true, that explains a lot....

 

Correct and I've been saying it for 4 years now that BB37000 2N2 POS are the main SNCF Cross border equipment to Germany

 

It seems a bit like TSW is going by inertia with old stocks and as if this project (TSW) has lost any potential for the future.

 

ngl i do feel like dtg is cutting short with new german rolling bc of them also working on new rolling stock for wales and the netherlands but yea they should rlly reduce with how many dlcs they are working on

 

To be honest if that’s the case they should just communicate it. Throughout the stream, in this thread, in every other thread and even in their own thread for questions it was just ignored to explain why no new stock was implemented.
If it’s really the case they need their vehicle artists for Wales and the Netherlands, just tell us so we know! Because otherwise (as it is right now) everyone will just think DTG is lazy- and that’s certainly nothing you want to be seen as as a game developer…
Transparency is key in such situations :/

 

Would you want them to reduce e.g. the amount of german routes? Instead of let's say 4 per year to only two?

 

If it means quality over quantity then yes. Eventually they will lose sales if they keep chucking out mass produced poor standard work, like the cheap Chinese imports that have replaced quality items in the shops!

 

Nothing better to do on a wet and windy afternoon, so 45 mins on the exercise bike watched an (abridged) digest of the preview stream.

Got to confirm nothing I saw to convince me this is a Day One or full price purchase. Didn't help the recording (or possibly it was just YT streaming) seemed fairly low res. However you could still see blurred textures on structures sharpening at the last moment. Just nothing about the route to lift it above what we already have for Germany. The curved section is no more scenic than RSN, MSB or DCZ which it actually reminded me of.And doesn't DCZ have a "Frankenstein" station anyway.

The sections I watched, no attempt seemed to be made to address the more searching questions raised in the Q&A and only a few positive items seemed to be drawn in from the chat.

You can see some love has gone into the route with station details and items like culverts and water courses beside the line. But none of that changes the fact that from a driving POV it's just another middling length run between two German cities with a fast(ish) straight bit, some rolling hills and forest and no new trains to justify the price. Will continue to assert this should be no more than £25 (UK) and where is the pre-order discount?

 

In the questions and answers, they practically didn't share much.....the essential question was lost, the question about performance on PS5 etc. is quite general and insufficient, and the file gives the feeling that the problems are permanent

 

I think the point they need to get to is similar to TSC where you have enough third parties producing regular content that DTG can focus on core stuff and a few 'showcase' routes per year. They can also help the third parties with licensing and promotion.

 

Despite my harsh criticism in the (as usual unanswered) Q&A thread of glaring bugs being present left and right during the preview, I actually rather liked what I saw in general.

I expected nothing really after extremely unappealing and generic screenshots in the articles, but it feels at least in some way different to me, the large stations are mostly very unique, and small curved stops in the valley are gorgeous. There is certainly a feeling that it's just a rehash of what we already have, but it's a rehash of fans' favourites and TOD4 makes it way prettier to look around.

But aside of the bugs I am also worried about the timetable, while Joe is praised by others in the community, the main featured train is supposed to be the BR 111 and from what we heard so far, it will be used on two services. Even the return trips for them will be run from the good ol' completely broken dosto with non-working PZB and many other broken core functionalities. Usually preview streams go in large through the list of services to show the variety available, but this time they were kinda shady and we only heard vague promises, stating also that large parts of the timetable will be straight missing on launch.

It looks nice, but the value of the route is perhaps at 20 euros after all the bugs are fixed, and I'm not really sure why they decided to price it at almost double of that.

 

manchester airport is probably the most boring out of all 4 of these routes though. what about that route interests you?

 

The problem there is that third parties have to go through DTG if they want to work for TSW and sell their products. Most third party content for TS isn't on Steam, and because DTG can't regulate what other people make we have a very free and very productive third party community. Plenty of the biggest names in TS third party content have never released anything of theirs on Steam.

Getting third parties into TSW is a challenge for DTG on multiple fronts. They've had several big names jump or partially jump ship already. Just Trains has mostly given up with TS, and ATS is working for both at the moment. TSG stopped making TS content a long time ago too. However, the growth won't be exponential. Steam developers like Caledonia Works and Victory Works have no interest in moving to TSW for obvious reasons, so the market for good steam in TSW simply doesn't exist because of limitations with the game. That is a big, big problem for DTG.

The limitations set by DTG on what can be made, by whom, and when, are also things that need to be addressed. Not that they will though. DTG were dead set on blocking third party content with Flight Sim World and their power fetish for TSW is apparent. No developer should have to work with DTG to release third party payware for TSW. You don't need permission for TS, which is why there's so much third party payware. You didn't need it for MSTS either.

If DTG removed the restrictions for third party payware, they would immediately see an increase in third party support. But they won't change their mind - they just don't get it.

 

I think at the outset, Kuju and their EA masters wanted to charge a hefty royalty for use of the tools in the original Rail Simulator which turned into Railworks then TSC. Something like £1000 to create and publish a payware route was a figure I heard bandied around. However it seems common sense prevailed and the EULA got relaxed with that requirement was scrapped.

 

I don't think it's a big problem for DTG. Because steam/vintage generally doesn't sell nearly as good as modern traction. So DTG developing Steam probably means less revenue. Them not developing steam is just a problem for the costumers who are into steam (and as it seems: there aren't a lot of them out there to begin with). There is so much more out there, countries, routes, locos - as much as this might hurt a steam enthusiast, but steam isn't everything. I totally understand everyone has their own favourite loco/traction type/era etc. But it won't we the end of TSW.

What you call limitations aren't all that bad. Without DTG, you wouldn't be able to release anything on console. So your potential costumers are only 1/3 of all the costumers. Doesn't seem very smart from a economic perspective. Also I didn't read a single time from any developer talking about 'burdens' by DTG. In fact the 3rd party team of DTG seems to help the devs a lot. And we already have a lot of 3rd party devs. Most of them didn't release anything yet, not because DTG doesn't want it but because products take their time. See JT taking more than a year for their first release.

 

I've not heard of any 3rd party dev being told by DTG that they weren't allowed to make a specific thing, or weren't allowed to develop for TSW at all. Have you, or are you just assuming that that has happened?

As far as having to let DTG publish TSW content, I seem to remember the explanation that that's necessary due to Unreal Engine licensing.

Obviously I'm not an expert, and I don't know what's going on behind the scenes between DTG and other developers, so I can only speculate based on what little information is public and I might well be wrong - but then again, I'm pretty sure the same is true for you, even though you sound quite confident.

 

Developers for TS have never had an issue with not being able to develop for consoles.

I can't go into exact detail, but DTG does have to give the go-ahead for every third party project. I simply have no idea what routes have been proposed but were turned down by DTG, but they do have criteria for what they'd consider releasing.

Even if DTG approved every single third party project, that doesn't justify the limitations they set on developers. If DTG want TSW to last as long as MSTS and TS have, they will need to relax the rules.

 

oh yes

 

I believe the reason for the limitations on developers is strictly due console regulations. For you to have a game on the console it has to go through licensing and certification.

DTG are a licensed publisher for MS and Sony so the can provide the door to developers to get onto the console ( It's a very expensive thing to do apparently) so smaller ones such as Whatsapp can afford to get into the console market.

Basically DTG takes responsibility for if there is a virus or somethjng that breaks the systems and would be forced to pay the costs of fixing any issues that may come about a product.

From that every game and DLC has the then go through a QA from Sony and MS and be certified it won't break something and there is a charge for that as well. This is why they can't just give everyone free mods on console as they all would have to be certified and who is going to pay for that?

If you look at the system in the console world MS and Sony, charge developers to be licensed and make games for them. You also have to purchase your own Developer Kits (which you can't rent/access unless you are a licensed developer and they take them back if you close or have the license revoked) and pay to have everything certified.

DTG in turn makes money off of smaller developers to sell their 3rd party DLC as it has to be licensed through them in order to get certified and published and publishing other games for console. By other developers.

Such as Tramsim.

The whole console market is geared to being a money making machine and alot more restrictive than the PC market which has mimimal restrictioms and more of a free market system.

But if DTG wanted to just stay in the PC market then why make a new game, just improve what you already had that worked being TSC.

The console market increases revenue by 200% and if want to go from being a small time developer to a big time developer that is what you need. I always figured you would want to grow and become bigger as a measure of success in the business world.

But the only way to loosen restrictions on the developers is to drop consoles. And i wouldn't want to take a 60% pay cut so I don't think DTG are going to either.

 

While this is obviously true, "DTG has to approve 3rd party projects" is hardly a valid answer to the question of "have you actually heard of DTG not approving a 3rd party project?"

If they approved everything, what limitations would there be?

 

And after the experience that we got from the breaks of the BR 114, we cannot tell this will be fixed soon.

 

Yes but the "cheap chinese knockoffs" do end up filling the shelves. People say they don't like them, but they then go buy them.

 

PS5 user I think that most bugs will become features, but the situation of the last few months clearly shows this.......there were many comments, suggestions, bugs, etc. and only a very small fraction, mostly unimportant things were fixed and many others were broken by it.. ...those are unfortunately facts......correct me if I'm wrong

 

And there is the problem. Beko vs. Bosch.

Sadly there are probably enough willing punters who will buy this route at full price and not refund to fulfil DTG’s initial sales expectations and they will sign off as job well done thus apply the same paradigm to future products.

 

When I was working for ATS last year I did know about projects that were being developed and that were cancelled. Because of the NDA I cannot tell you about them, and I don't know the internal processes of DTG and couldn't possibly know what projects have been unsuccessfully proposed by other third parties. If you're asking me to provide proof of DTG blocking third parties from cancelling projects you're barking up the wrong tree. I did propose an individual project of my own a few years ago which was turned down, but that barely counts.

Just because I can't provide evidence for it doesn't mean it isn't true.

• Licensing. Third parties in TS will often using free branding packs to get around licensing requirements; this is not an option in TSW. You will probably never see third party packs in TSW like AP's, with all the liveries from a class' life included.
• Release slots. DTG have a strict schedule for releasing DLC, by both themselves and third parties. There are hard deadlines for third party developers for when projects have to be completed.
• Price. Developers have very little influence over what DTG will charge for a DLC. This applies to TS as well, which is why Virtual Railroads rip out most of the functionality of their locomotives on Steam.

There are presumably quite a few more that I don't know about.

 

Scenery wise, this route is not actually that bad, but the rolling stock really isn’t great.

if they included something like an older dostos variant or something like that, it would be a real solid route

 

This a pass for me, £30 is quite egregious I feel, I just bought the Deluxe version of CTS Tram for cheaper. When I hear stuff like "You can select the TGV but it doesn't work yet" I just hear alarm bells and don't fancy buying another unfinished product. If the ICE 3 at least had suspension that could have been something but it doesn't look like it has it.

Mittenwaldbahn is how it should be done and i'm eagerly awaiting that route.

 

My money will be going on Mitterwaldbahn plus some TSC products I desire.

This route does look nice but with no new stock and some apparently incorrect stock then I am not minded to purchase it at £30. It is a shame if all the included stock does't have the new suspension.

I will probably wait for a sale. I am still to buy the Boston to Worcester route which I would be happier to pay full price for rather than this route.

 

I suspect this will be discounted fairly quickly. Really surprised given the £30 price tag they didn’t sweeten with a 10% off pre purchase deal. They seem to have become a bit stingy as regards that recently. But £15 or maybe a bit less would be enough to add it to the collection, eventually.

 

A 10-20% discount would probably open enough wallets to pay for itself. On 30 euros you're talking about a "loss" of 3 or 6... but also that many sales at a minimum. There's a significant number of people who will jump on sales, even if they're only a few percent on a whim. Offering nothing means those people will probably wait until an official sale, which means a bigger discount than that.
They probably lose money in the long run. Of course that's only a Steam thing I think consoles you're controlled by Microsoft and SONY, and that's the majority of the player base for TSW. Then they'll complain they don't get any discount so.... damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

just watched somebody do all the tutorials for the new mannheim route bc he got early access and i can already tell there is so many bugs first thing i see is that the ohle is just floating and not connected to the wire poles for allot of time in mannheim and there is 2 signs just floating above the ground next to the track

 

Definitely purchasing this tomorrow, if not for anything else, their portrayal of the Frankenstein Castle and bridge from the trackside from the previous picture looks very impressive. I am sure a lot of detail in other aspects of the route will be as good. Hoping so!!

 

I may be misremembering but wasn't it at one point DTG policy to not release routes without a new Locomotive or rolling stock?

 

Not since Glossip line was released.

I don't think it was actually a policy, more of a need to put as much stock as they could to build a collection early on in a games life. Now that we have a fair amount of stock I suspect we may get more. Remember when it was 2 new locos per route, then it dropped to one at some point, and Glossip was the first no new stock route, just a new livery.

They have pretty much all the stock for MBTA, and Metrolink(once the new loco comes out). So I would suspect if anymore of those routes came out there would be no new stock.

Not all TSC routes came with new rolling stock either.

But yes it would have been nice to at least get a new Dostos variant. And we still have more German rolling stock we need.