Metro Rivals Development Suspended

I think you’d still run into the same issue you have now, making built up areas is just taxing & if anything compressing them further would make it worse. Imagine B2C compressing all 3 cities into half the length, I’m not sure it would do any favours considering how tile loading works.

You then have the dispute ETS has always had, the game starts to feel like a toll booth simulator because as soon as you leave one city you’re ontop of the next, which then leads to next issue of cities don’t feel like cities as they consist of a couple of main roads. They of course aren’t 1:1 comparisons that a prospective rail simulator would need to worry about, but I think they’re factors which would still be a relative issue.

It’s definitely something that could work, but I think it only works at a large scale, TSW can’t really make 100+ mile routes work now & the ones that do exist tend to avoid major cities, I think many would just prefer to have 70ish mile runs from a major terminus to a regional hub.

 

It would be impossible to represent big stations with such a scale down factor. Not the station platforms themseves but the switches on the approach would take up a too large of a distance to be able to condense a route. In ETS the depots can be literally to 1-1 scale, and as far as I know even within city limits the scale is a tad larger so its not a constant scale shrink of the world. And in such a title great liberties will be taken in terms of realism of scenery, you might get a few landmarks but nothing that looks like the actual place.

Overall good idea, but not for a sim of train driving, more for a transportation sim/train driver life sim. Oh wait I just described something that already exists: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330660/Train_Life_A_Railway_Simulator/. It had an earth shattering peak player count of 400, which is less than the concurrent players of TSW6 by itself in the middle of the day in Europe. Most likely reason for that is that the game is garbage, and simply the idea is not something that catches. ETS2 built on top of a decade legacy of 18 Wheels of Steel games much the way the TSW franchise is. Doubtful that a new entry to market can hit like a big bang, unless the budget and quality is of a triple A title.

I much rather spend my time driving in TSW and enjoying scaled down worlds in something like Transport Fever, both filling in a niche that enough people enjoy to make a sustainable business for releasing sequels.

 

On a Christmas LiveStream a couple of years ago the SCS CEO said they had looked into trains, and boats as potential additions to their successful ETS and ATS games, but decided on both accounts that the market was too small and niche for them and (at the time) games like Train Simulator Classic had a strong dominant position.

 

Indeed, the same points that have been touched on when this was previously discussed. And of course with ETS2 and ATS the change of scale between the open country and built up areas mean it can take nearly as long to pass through a town or city as travelling to the next one. And while later maps did a better job of towns resembling how they appear IRL, many still just appear as a generic cluster of buildings and delivery locations.

 

Sony introduced a beta programm last year, so players can test games. I don't know how easy it is for developers to get their games on there, and how easily they can decide who has access and who not. It's also meant to be for early access, so I guess that's how reviewers get early access to TSW and DLC.

However, Dovetail seems to port the DLC to consoles themselves, so that's why 3rd developers do not test their DLC on console in advance. It looks like, it's the easier to test the DLC on Xbox then on PS, as Firefly stated they tested a lot on Xbox.

 

The end result though is that whatever Firefly did with testing, should be the standard.

I have some pretty strong feelings about the PS5 sound problem though, if Firefly ever do a loco DLC or a route that has a star of the show train & the issue repeats, it’s going to be a massive problem IMO.

That aside, even disregarding the extremely high quality of the route itself, the technical quality is a huge leap for TSW.

 

Not to speak on behalf of Firefly but I've heard good news about the PS5 sound issues, they seem to have made a breakthrough and hopefully it's not too much longer now until a hotfix

 

Agreed, they did a pretty good job there. They didn't rush it out of the door and did test the DLC themselves.

 

I did have more confidence in the Firefly team hearing about who was on the team and how prominent they've been in the community. And you're right with the standards they've reached I think it's definitely set the bar higher for all releases going forwards. It's just whether third party's and DTG will sit in their comfort zone or push the boat out a little.

I think with regards to the unfortunate sound issues once they sort this one out you'd hope that it can be learnt from and checked going forwards.