I don’t know if anybody here has ever played Dead by Daylight but if you have you know what the public test build is, and even though DBD and Train sim are completely different games I think adding a Test build to train sim is crucial. If you don’t know what it is, It’s basically when you can play a DLC before it’s released for free to test it out and figure out if you want it. This would be a good addition to the game because if DTG makes DLC’s playable for free lets say a week before release, it gives people the opportunity to find and report bugs that the Devs might’ve missed and experience a route to see if they would like to buy it once it’s released.
Come on. They're not going to let you play new DLCs for free, especially not for a week. You can watch the pre release streams (they usually do 2-3) which usually cover all the locos included and the whole line up and down a few times and figure out if you want it or not.
Its not just about that, its also about reporting bugs incase you didn’t read the whole thread. Many people complain because DTG releases routes full of bugs, I don’t see whats wrong with being able to play a DLC for free before it’s released.
I can see what you are suggesting, some sort of closed beta testing that you can apply to. It's something that many flight sim content makers do and it works well for their systems, but I don't know if Dovetail would ever be interested in it, especially when they released Preserved Collection trains that make no noise accelerating...
You can usually tell if you want to buy a route from other people’s reviews and videos and the forum as well as the live streams DTG do. As for testing, they have their own closed beta team for that. Is that beta team large or varied enough? Probably not, but they aren’t going to do open betas or test builds for the public. There are also ways to report bugs once the DLC is released. Open betas and public testing for new capabilities like the upcoming Raildriver and external hardware support are essential but not for the DLC. People would abuse it just to play stuff for free.
