This Is Why The Community Is Upset

A lot of you may have seen by now the various threads which have been posted, which several users express their feelings towards how TSW 2 has been heading recently.

The biggest issue is how the preserved content has been handled, and the lack of proper responses by DTG themselves.

The expectation:
The way it came across to me is that initially, when preserved content was announced to come into TSW 2, we could play preserved content in its EXACT same condition as it was in TSW 1, and then potentially receive upgrades for further down the line.

The reality:
The reality is it is arriving in a broken state into TSW 2, which we potentially have to wait months for it to get fixed. There is also no guarantee of these issues getting fixed. As we are often told that if it's not on the roadmap, it isn't being worked on.

This is why people aren't happy and it needs sorting out.

 

What I believe they meant by the same condition, is not additional features, like not compatible with the livery designer, scenario planner, and other features new to TSW2 content.

TSW2 is practically a completely different game from TSW. What may have worked in the original, doesn't work in TSW2, and now we are seeing that it needs to be tweaked a little.

Personally, I am giving DTG some more time to figure things out than immediatley jumping on them for not completely fulfilling my expectations. The jump to TSW2 is a big one, and there is a lot to do; fix bugs, transfer the preserved content, develop new routes, etc.

 

My expectation was this, on 13th August, in a reply to a thread asking if people would delete TSW2020 after TSW2 preserved collection was all available...

“With the distinct possibility of routes picking up extra bugs in the transition, I don’t want to delete the versions that won’t. I don’t know how much I’ll actually play TSW2020 once all the preserved content is out but there might be a difference in how they play so I want the option there”

There weren’t many people talking about extra bugs being likely at any time prior to the time the first preserved collection routes were released. Obviously that changed when we saw the first lot.

DTG saying that the preserved routes would be worked on further in TSW2 was also after I posted the above and only really became apparent when new DLC for those routes appeared on the roadmap and they told us about Adam’s new team. Before that it was implied they would be preserved and then left ‘as is’ and that was the expectation for many.

It turns out that I am still playing TSW2020, even the routes that have been released for TSW2. My current expectation? I haven’t the faintest idea what to expect now such is the sheer number of issues.

 

Once all the work on bringing preserved collection is complete, I imagine that they will fix the issues.

 

Hope*

 

No doubt they will fix some of the issues. In an ideal scenario they would keep going through all the issues until every one is fixed but as that is happening new DLC will be released which will also have issues that need addressing. It’s going to be a long process whatever happens. Some things may never be fixed as DTG might not consider them to be worth the time and maybe some things just won’t be fixable. There is still a lot of preserved collection to come and it’s sure to have similar issues to what we’ve already seen, so there’s bound to be more disappointment before there is any joy.

 

Of course, those on Xbox still can't return to TSW 2020, as doing so will cause all sorts of issues on TSW 2 and vice-versa. So we really are stuck with the preserved content on TSW 2.

The lack of response other than "If it's not on the roadmap..." is the worst part of this. I for one would be far more understanding if things were well communicated. However at the moment I assume the worst, as this is what DTG has taught me from the past...

 

Adam did actually mention this himself on the last Roadmap stream I think it was

 

What would happen if/when DTG release TSW3, will the "preserved collection" from TSW2020 & TSW2 have issues again porting over to the new game? It'll be a never ending cycle of playing catch up and fixing issues.

 

That's assuming TSW2 content even gets preserved into TSW3 and DLC doesn't end up like NEC did.

 

The $64,000 question...

This ‘preserved’ content is perfectly playable in TSW2020 and did not need to be rushed over into TSW2. We’ve been told that the team that would work on fixing fundamental issues with TSW2 will do so only when the preserved content has been brought in to the game. Well, clearly and very obviously, that is the wrong way around.

DTG set the time scales for this, no one else. Although there was noise (me included) rightly deriding DTG for abandoning all previous content, once they made the correct call and announced they wouldn’t do that, no one (that I’ve seen) has actually been clamouring for this preserved content to be brought over immediately. Including the stuff that came with TSW2, there is simply too much stuff to use at any given time either way.

Why then, have they been going full pelt at it and in their own inimitable style releasing preserved content in a borderline useless state when they simply didn’t have to? There were no dates put on this, no expectation from our (the players) side. Rather than take a bit of pride in the work and release it when it was ready, they yet again have gone at their own arbitrary deadlines and damaged their already appalling reputation. If they’ve done it to gain sales that’s even more ridiculous, because the impression it gives new buyers is of a company that puts profit before quality. Every. Single. Time. Can any if us honestly say that would be incorrect? In doing so they’ve once again presented a dilemma...do we leave it broken and move on, or do we now do the right thing and wade through all this extra work we’ve created for ourselves, forever looking back and never forwards. What a shambles.

The question is why? How have you still managed to mess up something where there was no pressure? All you had to do, for once, was get it right. What a mind-blowing concept!

I despair at the way this company is run, and curse my luck that for something that I find interesting (simming, and in this case trains) they are the only player in town. We will them to change tack, to realise the error of their ways but it is the ultimate in banging your head against a brick wall.

Finally, and I’m undoubtably going to get censored for this, the new community managers had better buck their ideas up pretty sharpish. Even Dmitri, who was pretty good, has been massively overshadowed by the job Sam has done. It is seriously disappointing that we can actually see his involvement winding down, and the new guard take over. Why? Because the input and information flow has dropped back to where we were in the bad old days. We’re back to CM’s who are stuck on transmit. Sort it out please, and soon.

 

You can continue to play preserved collection routes in TSW2020, so there is an alternative. I think the strategy to port them as soon as possible is a good one. For SKA the preserved collection trains offer a lot of additional value, and you don't want to wait for months to get that.

There may be a number of glitches and unexpected bugs, this should not surprise you if you ever developed software. Focus is now to get preserved collection running (no crashes, ability to complete activities and actually get the rewards). When this is done, other bug will be fixed. They are working on the sound issues, which is quite hard, if you followed some of the dev comments from Matt. Sound will never be perfect compared to the real world, but it will be better.

I see no reason for more negative comments. The issues we report are addressed, but it will take time. You can argue that testing is not a very strong point at DTG and I agree. Hopefully more people will get the opportunity to become a beta tester.. In between, my advice: do not think to much about bugs and stuff that is not working, but just enjoy what is working well.

 

Except on Xbox, TSW 2020 and TSW 2 can't live in peaceful harmony, as they're too busy trying to uninstall each other. So Xbox players have to pick one and stick with it

 

True.

 

I'd give you more than 1 like if I could. I didn't not noticed it until you mentioned it but I agree with the comments about Sam and his involvement slowly dying down. There's a real possibility we'll end up back to square one.

 

Two months after release we're complaining hard that things aren't perfect.
Poor Adam doesn't even have a full team and he's struggling to keep up.

I have all dlc except the lirr ones and the upgraded ones are quite playable.
Yes there are bugs and glitches, but they don't detract from the playability of the game.
Scenario borked? Run another or a timetable. Switch your loco, route, whatever.
So what if your top speed is ten km below what it should be?
Most of the glitches are irritating but not game breaking.

Why is the strategy of updating the preserved items before fixing everything so hard to understand?
I'd rather have them half playable now than perfect next year. Ymmv.

 

Really..? Would you buy a new car that only works half the time until you can take it to a garage to be fixed? No, you would want it to work right away correctly or be corrected right away. Your way of thinking just encourages slacking.

 

I respect your opinion, but I strongly disagree

 

I concur with DAVIDH0501 completely. Recall that DTG pushed back the release date of TSW-2 in order to ensure they would be able to bring along the legacy routes. I don't recall anyone at that time objecting to the strategy of 'update now, fix afterwards' -- we wanted the routes in our hands.

The railroads I drive in TSW-2 have faults and flaws -- so did the real-life railroad that took me to and from work before the pandemic. Nevertheless, TSW-2 is playable. I passed level 100 a few days ago, less than two months after release.

DTG is a relatively small company in a niche market, their sincerity is evident and they are making progress -- the Roadmap is brilliant, we know what they are working on. We all know that project management with all staff working at home can be both frustrating and perilous, so don't expect miracles.

Every morning as I have my coffee and prepare to meet the day, I become an S-Bahn driver, sets the tone for the day. We have a great railroad simulation here and I'm glad of it!

 

This is the problem we currently face. If things are rushed out, half complete, there’s no guarantee that they will get fixed. (As seen in the past with various TSW 1 DLC’s)

I think the majority of people would prefer to wait so things are done properly. Yes, you will have to wait longer, however in the long term it’ll allow things to operate a lot more smoother. As opposed to having to come back to various DLCs months down the line, IF they even get time and resources to do so.

 

You may be happy with this (and I respect that), however people are allowed to complain and be unhappy with subpar products. It helps in life to understand that people won't share the same views as you, and that they have a right to complain even when you're happy with something.

If a scenario can't be completed, then this is a pretty major bug. Of all things to be tested, the ability to complete the scenarios (something that are listed on the store page, and therefore assumed to be complete) should exist.

The gameplay experience at the moment reflects an early access game, not a fully finished product. And this spoils the experience for the vast majority of people commenting on this thread.

 

Thanks for the answer DTG Natster. However, DTG always said that they test the software before release. Right, suppose this is actually true. What about releasing a know issues list for each DLC, given that many if not most of the bugs can be issued right after playing 10 minutes? This could give a strong sense of "we know it is bugged as we test the thing, however, we want to make them playable to you as soon as possible".

 

The vast majority were supportive of the delay because it meant we were getting a preserved content to work with the Scenario editor.

There's always a few people who want stuff yesterday, but I'd say the vast majority want a working and quality product.

The initial TSW 2 release of SKA, Bakerloo and CSX gave enough gameplay that there was no rush for the preserved content. People could have switched to TSW 2020 if they were that desperate to drive a rubbish sounding turbo, safe in the knowledge that the content would be preserved in the same quality in the coming months.

 

I understand what you're saying here, but if we have to be realistic and practical, there has to be constraints. Take that analogy for instance...perhaps you're constrained financially. Not everyone can shell out money for a car repair right away, correct? The logical thing here would to be save up some money and work up to your goal...little by little. Sometimes large goals can't be achieved without having little milestones to help guide you along the way.

Taking it back to TSW, this is more or less whats happening. We all want bugs to be fixed and more features to be implemented, but its extremely hard to do that all in one day. It seems that DTG is all about slow progress. They're doing one thing at a time– working on the preserved collection and putting them out there first. After the dust is settled, perhaps they'll come back and address the issues. They've got a dedicated team to handle that now, right?
At the end of the day, it might seem like negligence, but there still are issues being addressed.

Anyhow, handling things this way is...err...arguable at best? It seems to be the vast majority of us aren't happy with the current state of things, myself included. But I still feel as though it'd be wise to give things some time to be worked out before we all go out with pitchforks...after all its like I said: It's is all about slow progress here. Once the remaining preserved collection routes are done, that's when the real work begins. Or...at least that's the idea :P

 

DTG could fix all the bugs they know about but they've got teams working on different roles. They're playing a balancing act by fixing old bugs, bringing the preserved collection over and making new routes. As for financial constraints and paying for a repair on the new car. It would still be under warranty and the garage would get it in asap to correct the fault.

DTG should be working towards fixing all known issues and bugs before they pump out more dlc (which they'll charge people for) when an existing routes (which people have paid for) still have issues which effects some users ability to complete a scenario or task correctly and ultimately it effects users enjoyment of the game.

 

Well said! There will always be flaws and faults within. Not everything will be able to get fixed. But we do know DTG and the preservation crew will do there very best with the team that they have to investigate problems and fix what they can. The roadmap is indeed a very helpful tool and brings light to what we can expect within the upcoming weeks ahead. We absolutely have a great railroad simulation here, I'm enjoying every moment of this game and excited to see the further updates and improvements down the line aswell.

 

I take issue here with 2 things:
1) if something like a scenario, which is core content to the dlc, is unplayable, then I feel it is not fair considering the price.
2) if you stop thinking about people coming from TSW2020 with preserved content, you end up with new customers who bought these DLCs first hand for Tsw2. For them it is not about waiting to get back at the level they were before, they just get lower quality content out of the box and that seems unfair to me.

Most of the current issues I can perfectly ignore until they are fixed, but you should be able to complete a service that takes you between 1 and 2 hours and be able to play the 3 exclusive scenarios.

 

About a week after TSW2 was released I did a Scenario on Sand Patch Grade (I forgot which one), it took me around two hours to get down to Cumberland Yard and literally 1 mile before the end the game crashed on me. I did save the scenario but that was still a good hour into the scenario. What did I take from the game crashing? It made me not want to start it again, it annoyed me and reminded me to save more often. The crash made me not enjoy something which I invested a good two hours of my time into.

 

Exactly the reason why I only play SPG for the shunting services at Cumberland.
Mind you that there are routes where merely pressing the save button the service gets bugged. So I play a service in one sitting only.
Oh and while your game crashed, which is annoying, imagine you go the 2 hours and end up in front of a red signal at the end that will never turn green.

 

If it ensures that the new routes won’t be as buggy as the current & preserved ones, I’d gladly wait longer. Like how we’re all patiently waiting for Isle Of Wight.

 

I think you can guarantee that if they had delayed the preserved collection releases till they had gone through them all with a fine toothcomb we would have had several threads of people complaining that the planned preserved collection hadn't been released as had been promised and why was it taking so long!

And maybe we should give the new community managers a break, they are new to this. Have none of you ever started a new job and had to settle in rather than being told to buck their ideas up after five minutes?! Treat others how you would like to be treated.

Surely it is best to be a little patient and then draw the daggers if things are the same in a few months time! They are obviously well aware of the problems.

TVL seems to work perfectly well in TSW2 from my experience so far by the way.

 

I think we have to be careful when using phrases like "the community is upset" or "the vast majority". People speak for themselves and that's fine. Speaking for myself, I am thoroughly enjoying the game. For instance, I have completed all but one of the scenarios on SPG and am well into the timetable. And that one scenario is on the Roadmap to be fixed shortly. I have played a few scenarios on other routes (except the German ones) with no serious issues. So, please, let's not claim to represent the entire community.

 

Well said. Almost my thoughts exactly. I too feel as though too many of us are jumping all over DTG too soon. I believe DTG is really trying to get better at this, both the development and community aspects. If is still the same case in a few months time, then maybe we should be really worried.

 

Precisely, I am too enjoying it.

Whilst there is obviously some angst at the moment how can anyway say the represent "the vast majority" when they can have no idea of what the vast majority think or who they are. A relatively few vocal members on here isn't the whole user base or community.

 

It would have been nice if they had gone through them with any kind of comb. Some of the issues people are having have been found within minutes of starting the game. Yes, it's generally accepted there will be issues but they are usually not as glaringly obvious.

This may be a new company they are working for, but having read the person specification for the job advertisement, it's not like they are totally new to the role, they were required to have experience so it's only fair to expect that experience comes with a certain amount of competence in the role.

I don't believe there has been anyone who has been disrespectful or abusive to any of the DTG staff.

Drawing daggers is a little bit dramatic! People have a right to be disappointed or upset when they have spent their money on a product which they don't believe is up to standard.

 

To echo Longo:

- As far as I'm aware, very few people expect every single bug to not exist. That's near impossible. However, some of the bugs are so major and so obvious, that these products must have skipped the QA process. Either that, or the QA process needs ripping up and starting again.

- There has been no anger directed at the community managers, however people are rightfully upset. DTG has a magnitude of other staff who can comment and back up their new(ish) community managers if they so wish. If you're thinking that this thread is too much for them, then you really need to have a look at every other gaming site in existence, as this is very tame.

- It's good that TVL mostly works. But that doesn't excuse the other routes. Not everyone has TVL, or cares etc, including me who prefers German content (which seems to be worst hit).

- All in all, this thread has been mostly civil. People are rightfully allowed to be upset over a product. If you're happy, then there's a "Well Done DTG" thread waiting for a post. I wouldn't to in there and tell people that your views are wrong and you should give it a break.

 

I said we should give the new community managers a break and that telling them to buck their ideas up maybe wasn't fair. I also suggested we should be a little patient and wait to see what happens rather than putting the boot in straight away. I also suggested that sweeping statements that suggest the vast majority of users are unhappy was not also correct. I also brought up TVL just to show not everything was bugged in the preserved collection.

However, I never suggested no-one had a right to be upset and I certainly have not suggested that any bugs are acceptable.

 

To be honest I didn't see the comment about bucking their ideas up. It's the company themselves that need to buck their ideas up, as unfortunately the community managers are only capable of repeating whatever message the company wants them to say.

 

I can patiently wait for the preserved content. I didn't mind DTG delayed the TSW2 release, it was for good reason. Of course I'm looking forward to see the preserved content released, I really am. So when it's finally released, and I enthousiastically hop in the new preserved content train, it's a huge dissapointment to see it quality dropped so badly.

The community may be divided into two groups here. One group may prefer preserved content be released quickly, even if it's bugged. Another group would prefer to wait until the preserved content can be released with sufficient quality. That does mean that, indeed, DTG can never satisfy everyone and one group will always be upset.

 

I think most of the long term players who've played Train Simulator know DTG quite well, and they don't have a good reputation. DTG finally having a crew dedicated to improving old content is a good thing, but forgive me being very skeptical about DTG. They should've had this years ago. The words are promising, and they give a spark of hope, but only time will tell if they actually improved things...

People are upset with DTG. Not with the community managers. Over the past years DTG has created a very bad reputation amongst a large portion of their customers. It's good to see DTG spending some resources in hiring community managers, which gives a spark of hope, but I don't think we should hold back on our feedback just because the community managers are new to the job. They got quite some work to do. :P

 

It's so baffling that dtg keeps making the same crappy decisions. I mean come on, the players weren't putting pressure on dtg about preserved collection yet they keep making the same horrible business decisions espically during a pandemic were people lost they're jobs and may not be making as much money as before. It's like they treat their customers like crap and it's not fair. I want to see this game succeed but if they keep doing the same garbage, i'm not sure it will espically if they release new routes with bugs. People may not be intrested in buying the new annoinced routes so when people see they're favorte old route riddled with bugs, they're gonna get upset

 

I guess it's a case of what does DTG want to be known as:

- The company that produces expensive DLC that can be shoddy in quality.
- The company that is a bit slow releasing DLC.

Rivet fall into the second category at the moment (we've had two months of teasers now!). However, if the IoW is really high quality, then this will be forgotten about near immediately. If the quality is poor, then this will have lasting repercussions.

 

I myself am just glad that we're getting our old DLC from TSW, yes it's not without it's flaws sadly but I'm happy for all planned DLC to be imported asap, once done, THEN.... At the next roadmap I want to be seeing things like [Fix] Sound for loco xxxx and start moving up towards release quite quickly. If I don't see this happening, then the toys will start being thrown out the pram

 

This clearly shows they don't test properly

 

I agree, they need to fix the issues instead of releasing buggy routes

 

I believe (even though I won't be buying the Isle Of Wright unless there is a reasonable sale because $24.99 plus tax for a 8 mile route is overpriced) that the Isle Of Wright will have very few bugs because they've taken their time releasing it unlike dtg who will rush out dlcs for a profit. I rather wait for a route that has bugs that aren't noticable and aren't massive then a route riddled with massive bugs

 

This is why I wish and espically for consoles that dtg had a competitor because since they're is no competitor for train simulator on consoles they are running the show effectively and making stupid decisions. They are slacking and treating their customers like garbage. If they had a competitor that made a better train simulator product, dtg would in my opinion step their game up and improve massvly because if they didn't, they would lose money if they had competition.

 

I don't think there is a problem with releasing preserved content with some bugs, as this kind of thing happens frequently. The actual problem is that, because of past experience, we are not sure those bugs will be fixed. I know they are making a new preservation team, and hopefully they will be able to fix the big bugs (note I'm not saying every single bug), but at this point DTG needs to prove that they will allow the team to spend the necessary time for each DLC after release.