(rant) "fix-it-later" Dtg Culture Ruined The Game.

Let's just put this way: If we have the content now I want to be able to enjoy it on it's full potential - Today. Not in 6 months, not 12 months. How long it's acceptable to wait for a fix?
The claims that things changed, feels like just a PR stunt - marketing - whatever you wanna call - Illusion.
Who's fault? management? dev's?
Do management give dev's enough time with deadlines?
DTG doesn't change until things really change.
And right now it's going downhill. A giant runaway train.

 

Simple answer. No.

 

There is literally 0 communication, 0 commiting to anything, even the latest patch didnt apply to PC users hasnt been addressed by any employer of DTG in a way like "we are looking into it". It takes 5 minutes to write that down and send a message to the devs. But no. It is complete quiet here. We are returning back to the situation before we got Protagonist as Community Manager.

 

They (Sam) only claimed that the communication levels have changed. Seems to be only Sam that HAS changed but we shall see

 

I would tend to agree that many releases give off the hum of a last minute rush job with TS and TSW.

TSW2 has to be marketable, the longer there are noticeable issues with content (new and preserved) the smaller the market reach of the product will become. That there is a TSW2 is a bit of a marketing own goal so early in the platform's life span, DTG are listening and I never expect things to be 100% on release but I can already feel the excitement that was whipped up for the TSW2 is starting to wane.

Time for DTG to let developers lead the process.

 

Not true and not fair. Yes there's been a lack of response to some certain topics but to say there's "0 communication, 0 committing to anything" is not true.

 

Then tell me where DTG is commiting to anything? They said that things on the roadmap can disappear at any time. There was no response on the 29th September Patch not applying to PC users. There IS no communication regarding the important things for the game.

 

I suggest you look through the forums a bit more first. There have been more urgent issues that console users have been experiencing where they haven't even been able to even play the game/certain DLCs. But by no means am I excusing what's going on. There is communication. Just not enough and evenly distributed. I agree it feels like PC users have been left in the dark a bit the last few days.

 

I’m sorry but I think we’re getting angry at the wrong people here.

The issues you raise go way above Community Level, eg Sam etc, they go above, Adam, they go above Matt, the decisions, we’re seeing are at Director and Boardroom Level, and the sooner everyone realises that the better, but when people saying this is a rushed/unfinished job, they may well be right but don’t blame Sam, Matt, Adam etc, there’s something rotten at the very top which is the cause of this.

My personal opinion, is the game has bugs, some have been addressed/will be addressed and some will simply be missed. It really doesn’t ruin the game for me, some of the threads on here are far too dramatic.

I was always dipping in and out of TSW and using TS Classic, now I’m 80% using TSW2 and very occasionally playing TS Classic. For me the game has raised the bar for me, it’s not perfect by any means but I’m looking forward to see what else they have to offer.

Again, all my opinions.

 

Words, however positive, mean nothing if not followed up by meaningful action. Time will tell.

 

It’s a common theme to hear Senior Management blamed for issues like these. However there’s more often an issue at middle management, sort of the Product and Project Managers. Generally those are the people who determine the technical strategy and also make the projections about the time and cost needed to get software out of the door in good working order. If they’re overly optimistic or try to gain favor with Senior Management by pitching low budgets and timelines everything starts unwinding. The problem is that the Senior Management aren’t that technically savvy (say how the game engine works) so they rely on the people at the Product and Project Management levels to educate them.
Then what happens is that teams that actually build the stuff are then faced with the issue of not having enough time and money to do things properly. Anything that can be short cut, QA, documentation, regression testing all get dropped. The teams get hacked off - they have pride in their work - and the middle management don’t make too many waves as they know they’re evaluated and paid on meeting the time and money estimates they gave to Senior Management.
If Senior Management are the ones that are imposing too small budgets and too short timelines it still comes back to a Product and Project Management problem. If they don’t push back, or produce evidence that shows that more is needed then the same problems ensue.
What happens on projects like this is that some stuff, generally that done early on in the project schedule gets done well. What doesn’t get done so well is the later work as the time and money runs out. So you might build a visually decent train but the addition of sound to it might be lackluster or the scenarios you build for it full of bugs.

 

I agree, the game isn’t in the state we all want it to be in. As time goes by, I am realizing more and more that it’s not really the devs fault, and more of an upper management issue. Not enough Employees (for TSW 2), not enough time, etc.

I notice that DTG likes to rush things out with many bugs and tends to never fix those bugs. There isn’t anything we can do about the upper management so let’s hope another company *Cough, Cough* (Rivet) *Cough, Cough* can give DTG some competition in the Train Sim market. This will surely cause DTG to up their game (no pun intended) with making the routes. Either that or we’ll have much better routes that’s just made by another dev team.

I don’t want to blame any of this on the devs because it looks like Matt, Adam, and the others really want to see this game prosper. I just think they are held back by the decisions from the higher ups.

 

There is no doubting the passion TrainSim-Matt or TrainSim-Adam have for trains and their desire to deliver a polished product. Sadly, money is key here. DTG is a business at the end of the day and money dictates everything.

 

‘There is no doubting the passion‘
Unfortunately passion isn’t always a key skill to business success. Sometimes passion gets in the way. People management, taking hard decisions (even though they might not match your desires) and understanding what the best ‘value’ proposition is to make use of the resources that you have at your disposal are all more important.

What money that have at their disposal (and you’re guessing that is the constraint, it could be many other things) will largely be driven by the sales of the product. Take a very simple decision to support both the console and PC markets with one product. On one hand they had an existing client base that was PC based and they saw a new untapped market with console players. Did they have the resources and expertise to pull that off?

 

This is not simply a money issue - just because they are a business doesn't mean they have to release broken, bad products. After all, if they keep doing this, they are going to loose customers and will not make money. And supposedly every business knows that they need to make good product to get sales. If they do not, then they are likely to go bankrupt sooner or later.

So what I'm trying to say is that this is not simply because they are a business that need money, this is because of bad planning and incompetence, because things could be done so much better than they currently are. As to who is to blame, I don't know. But they should really get themselves together.

 

No doubt a lot of these issues are caused by bad business decisions, such as setting deadlines which are unrealistic for the size of the project required.

What you then get is a rushed, incomplete product. Plagued with bugs which may never get fixed. This then leads to bad reviews which eventually gives the company a bad reputation.

DTG have always had a bad reputation. They're like a bad smell which never goes away. They really need to change the way they operate. Management need to realise that they aren't giving the developers enough time.

 

I think there's two issues at play here:

Issue 1 - Content is released in an often buggy state. This has been significantly exasperated by the Preserved collection, which has become some of TSWs buggiest content. The core TSW 2 package, whilst with some bugs, for the most part hasn't been too bad. Yes, there's the usual quality issues (clipping objects, timetable issues, crashes etc) but nothing to the extent of what has become the preserved content.

Issue 2 - Communication. Sam did a very good job at communicating on the run up to TSW 2. But now, communication has gone out of the window. Threads go unanswered, tickets are taking nearly two weeks to reply to, and people are getting frustrated as a result.

DTG, it isn't too late. Start communicating, start proving you'll fix stuff (more than the roadmap PR stunt) and start pretending that customers actually matter to you.

Many serious bugs have been raised, and the stock response is "it's not on the roadmap, so no plans to fix, but this might change". I've seen politicians give more straight up answers.

At the moment, the only thing that matters to the community team is to not commit to anything. I've never known this of any of the games I've ever played in the past.

 

I have a distinct feeling of Deja Vue here, wasn't this all gone through not long after TSW 1 was released?

 

I think it's a lot worse this time round.

 

Agree 100%. This is apparent today with the Bakerloo Line with it's paltry timetable, and SKA which is still missing S Bahn trains (requires RRO for the 422 even though HRR includes a 422 already - what's going on here?). I still remember the day East Coastway was released, and the first month was full of SPADs, and we didn't even get any flange squealing until 3 (or was it 4?) months after it released. Until this day, AI trains make no motor deceleration sounds, and we're 2 months away from it being a year old already, so my confidence in that bug ever being addressed is close to 0 at this point. I treat all TSW DLC as beta products because that's basically what they are.


You can almost bet confidently that day 1 bugs will happen, so just make the smart financial decision, and wait until the first sale period which is usually around 3 months after release. By then, a couple of patches would hopefully address some of these issues, and you get to save money, AND get a more refined product in the process.

 

Although most beta products get updated and fixed, otherwise they're just known as abandonware...

 

So what dovetail needs to do is after Iow is released they should just focus on fixing bugs.
the preserved team can still work but mostly on bugs. And then they go on stream and act like nothing is wrong

 

IoW is not being produced by DTG... So surely their dev team could do this immediately according to you?
I mean that would put the entire roadmap on hold and mean no new releases for several months...

 

It's better to have the bugs fixed now than to have them continue to release half-baked routes.

 

Each route is almost a standalone collection of content, so each time they release a route it would have it's own standalone issues. So half baked routes remain a risk when the QA constraints remain (as in the bosses trying to push content out before it's at an acceptable standard)

 

Why does it always have to be one or the other?

It is possible to push out quality products at a timely rate, it just requires forward planning.

The problem is that DTG always seem to be playing catch-up. It's like the going round putting out fires, as opposed to trying to avoid then in the first place.

If bugs were caught in the first place and resolved, you wouldn't need three people to play catch up. If communication had been improved a while back, then you wouldn't need three community managers instead of one.

 

You need to write down issues and to be sincere with it. So stick everything that the community is concerned about and everything that the community wants on top of any other thread and list. Than will have some basics for the better communication in the future.

 

You realise that list would be thousands of items...

 

Maybe a uservoice page where suggestions for features could be made, voted on by the community and updated by DTG would be more appropriate.

 

Would it really? Clearly some people are having major frustrations but having played a big chunk of SPG and some of each of the other US and UK routes, I'm still looking for my second major bug. Am I right in thinking that the problems relate mostly to the German routes (which I don't play -speeding along at 200 mph doesn't fit my definition of railroading unfortunately)? If that's the case then I understand the frustrations.

 

It would require a dedicated person. But at the end it would be beneficial to everybody. Like this we would never have control over issues and suggestions. At least make it possible to arrange everything by some criteria. For example by the number of times viewed or liked?

 

AFAIK, Sam is on vacation. So, yes, it is as if he is not doing anything at the moment because he isn't.

 

The quote was "everything that the community is concerned about and everything that the community wants" concerns and wants aren't the same.

Ah, development by popularity contest. I see what you want. Hopefully people want the same as you do else you might be waiting some time for ANY content you actually like