I want to preface this by saying the concept here is golden, albeit with plenty of bugs and design oversights that shouldn't be too difficult to fix. By no means do I mean any disrespect to the developers or fans of the game, this is the game I've wanted to exist my entire life and I've loved a lot about it so far. Most of these ideas are simply just toggles that could be easily implemented without much if at all development time. I realize that the simulator aspect tends to have the purist ideology where anything arcadey is off limits, but I really feel this would broaden the scope and allow a lot more of an audience in. Believe me, I am super grateful this is a simulator and not just some kiddy arcade game, but it would be nice to have more freedom for the player to choose instead of being mandated one way just for the sake of it. As someone who has been a Thomas fan for 20+ years I want this game to succeed in every way possible. FREE ROAM -Don't close the session if you derail, just allow the player to spawn another train and keep going -Remove all penalities for running signals in free roam, call it a God mode if you'd like, not everyone is looking for a 100% simulator experience -Continuing on God mode, remove the need to set a path. Allow engines to be jumped on and seamlessly driven away without needing to plan everything beforehand. Defeats the purpose of exploring if you have to set a path having to know the destination. -Patch the realistic throttle and brake controls so that way the gear select is with the D pad and throttle and brake can be modulated more accurately like in TSW 6 -Remove the invisible walls in the open areas like fields and streets. No one is expecting collectibles everywhere, but it would be nice to be able to walk and explore on foot some of the beautiful landscapes within reason on the already modeled geometry -Add a 'place driver inside cab' option inside the pause menu. It's very easy to no clip out of bounds on foot by accident and have to end the session when your train is right in front of you but you're stuck behind an invisible wall -Adjust how the weather and time options are toggled in the main menu (speed them up, have stick be large inputs and d pad be small inputs), it takes dozens of seconds to adjust month and time of day. MAIN GAME -SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES (Good glory watching the same 6 minutes of cutscenes every attempt is extremely grating and cancels any chance of ever wanting to replay a story mission for fun) -CHECKPOINTS -DIFFICULTY SETTINGS (Realistic stopping distance toggle off? Running signals just lowers your score? Paves the way for online leaderboards) -Decrease the size of the waypoints DRAMATICALLY. They block the entire front view of the tracks if the camera is facing forward. Put it in the top right of the screen so you can see upcoming signals and waypoints without blocking your vision (like in TSW 6) BUGS: -Lots of issues with pop in. Optimization should be key here. PS5 should be more than capable -Sometimes opening the map just soft locks you into the map and you have to close the game completely and restart -Percy's wheels lock up at full brake below 20mph. I actually have no idea if that's a bug or an attempt at realism, if it's realism then disregard. Not sure why it would be just him. -I'm fairly certain decoupling a train at speed shouldn't cause a derailment (minor nitpick but sometimes it's fun to mess around with allowing your coaches to fall behind and then "catching" them with your engine) WISH LIST (Not as necessary but would just like to mention) The obvious: Edward Henry Toby, of course and then the rest of the gang in chronological order of appearance in the show if/when the game continues to do well. Please don't charge an arm and a leg for every single character. Make a "Premium Deluxe" edition like Forza Horizon does where you pay a one time fee to get every single piece of new content as it arrives instead of individually having to pay every time Unpopular opinion: I know Lady and Diesel 10 from Thomas and the Magic Railroad aren't really as canon or referenced anymore, but it would be a real treat to have these characters playable, Diesel 10's claw doesn't even need to be animated, it just would be nice to have them. I'm willing to bet people (myself included) would pay a lot for that. Lady's whistle is my favorite whistle from the series so getting to hear that would be incredible. On the same note, having a Thomas and the Magic Railroad themed story mission with a chase sequence at the end would be a dream come true. -Allow the whistle input to play the whistle as long as the button is held, instead of the preset whistle notes, allowing for unique and non repetitive whistle blows -Option to play various themes from the show while exploring. Especially the classic themes for each engine -If possible, ability to customize weather and time of day while already in a session -It would be really epic to have a railside house to drive to and keep collectibles stored in/displayed, use the bed to change time of day, and maybe a pond out back with a fishing mini game while your current engine watches from a siding and cheers you on. Relaxing side modes like this really add a lot to games like these. It'd be nice if missions and timetables earned a currency that you could use to upgrade your house or buy fishing gear. (I realize these ideas are off base but they're just ideas) RACING MODE -It would be cool to have an option to race other engines down a specific portion of track, and since certain engines are faster than others, for drag races it could be a button mashing mode to keep speed, or for a circuit race it could be about managing brakes on corners (Split screen multiplayer would be fantastic for this) ONLINE MULTIPLAYER -I realize that would take a lot of work to implement, so I don't expect this at all, I just want to say that the desire is absolutely there
