Thoughts On Creators Club Being Locked Behind A Paywall

A good decision to split the creators club out and make it a free upgrade.

 

indeeed. Matt said it was a ‘wrong idea’ to make behind a paywall

 

The great advantage to using the Steam Workshop in TS was the user created scenarios rather than the reskins.
Looking forward to this in TSW.

 

Yeah, I don't quite understand why they all keep talking about livery sharing, while I think the scenario sharing is way more interesting.

 

It's because the scenario designer is a pile of horse manure and livery designer is descent.

 

Well Matt said he was holding off on further scenario editor work until the dust settles on Creators Club.
I doubt reskins alone will keep it alive and vibrant.
Not everyone wants to pimp their ride.

 

Thinking a bit more I’m slightly concerned that the Club will initially be focused on the livery editor.
As Cam said the scenario editor is the unfortunate red headed stepdaughter.

The one thing these forums demonstrate is the members obsession with detail.
Accuracy of sound, visual details, operation, lighting etc. .
The restrictions on original working liveries means that the permitted ones are going to be of little interest.
Imaginary liveries of HSTs in Dutch colours or an ICE3 in Amtrak ones won’t cut it for the majority.

 

You need to parse carefully- as Sam himself heavily suggested we do, and might have delivered a big stage wink as he did so - “If you ask us for permission we will have to say no.” Which is much like “Don’t let me see you sneaking out after curfew.” Or “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In other words, a great big lampshade saying, in effect, “we won’t notice RL liveries if you don’t make us notice them”

 

In my opinion Steam workshop in TS was a mess. Very laborious to use, difficult to find stuff and most of the stuff was naff because it used stock DTG items. All the good stuff, literally 99% of it, was available on 3rd party websites. Ironically, particularly early on, much of it was (and still is) on Matt’s own website!

History is in the process of repeating itself. Admittedly DTG’s content for TSW is much much better than TS1, but most of what you find in the scenario / livery creator will be blah by comparison. Who wants made up liveries? No thanks. Scenario’s with made up liveries? Again, no thanks.

In the meantime on community driven sites you can get all the best stuff, and all of it for free. There are already great scenarios on there using real world liveries and timetables, so I highly doubt I would use the official medium even if it were free.

Either way, it’s not worth getting stressed over. What will be will be.

 

We can but hope.
Making it free is a good way to keep their hands clean.

 

While you are correct, you are correct with regard only to the PC community. Console players don’t have access to mods.

 

True, but consoles players knew/know that and made their bed.

PC’s are just more mod-able, that’s always been and probably will always be the case.

 

True: But TSW was made, from the start, with the intention of moving train simming into the console market. And it worked: console users make up about 2/3 of the player base.

 

I've created several Workshop Scenarios for Train Simulator and I've had plenty of people playing them. So there's certainly a group of players who's totally fine with whatever the Workshop offers.

I agree it can be tedious to find stuff that you own the required DLC for. It has its limits, but it's considerably better than having nothing.

And third party websites do come with their own challenges as well, with third party dependencies for scenarios and manual installation of files. I wouldn't say they are easier to use than Steam Workshop.

 

Oh... I thought all the best stuff was on AP (paid for), ATS (Subscription paid for) and several other paid for sites...?
Can you point me to the "good stuff websites" that are free?
And by that I mean you pay NOTHING for the stock, assets and scenarios

 

Huh? I never said you didn’t have to pay for it. I said it was the best stuff. It’s a forum, you don’t have to throw down a gauntlet.

There is plenty of excellent free content on ATS, UKTS and a plethora of other sites (as I’m sure you’re well aware) including models as well as reskins. As it stands, absolutely everything on Train Sim Community is free.

 

All fair points. It was just my view of the Workshop. To be fair, about 18 months to 2 years ago there was a shift change in 3rd party content for TS and almost everything now comes with dedicated automated installation. It’s a million % more user friendly than it used to be. Life is too short to be manually copying geo files around!

 

Erm, you did... "And all for it for free"

 

Although not explicit, I was referring to TSC.

 

I was hoping that wasn't the case
If "the best" is six routes (a few of them old), zero locos, a few reskins and 24 scenarios then I would hate to see what "the worst" is

 

I have no idea what you’re talking about, sorry. To reiterate, I am talking about TSW mods available on TSC.

You seem hell bent on trying to start an argument. Not sleep well?

 

You hadn't made that clear...
Hence talking about TSC sites in my response.

 

People don't give Workshop the credit it deserves I think - there's plenty of good scenarios on there and there's a few very creative ones. Contrary to popular belief, you can use 3rd party reskins downloaded from wherever, and most (if not all) the AP Enhancement Packs also work on there, you just can't use rolling stock, routes and route assets that aren't on Steam or Workshop.

I've had plenty of happy customers.

 

Just curious and I know a bit OT, but is Workshop still restricted to content which only utilises built in or DLC, i.e. no station signs knocked together in 3D Canvas etc.?

 

Seems I’m outvoted then which is fair enough

I just found it really hard-work to use, and separating the wheat from the considerable chaff was just way too time consuming.

 

You know how much time Matt spends playing these games, right?
Maybe his patience levels are just greater than ours?

 

Yes.

 

In the early days, I had dozens of Workshop items on my TS install. There is an enormous amount of content and much of it is excellent and those folks deserve a lot of credit. But it became more and more difficult to pick out the really good stuff and some downloads messed up my game and were not always easy to uninstall. So, eventually, I found it much easier to buy inexpensive scenarios, locos and routes from High Iron and other 3rd parties officially released by DTG.
But Workshop is a great resource, nonetheless.

 

Okay, thanks Matt.

 

I noticed this during the preview of the upcoming expansion pack last night that on the build that was being shown, something was a little different in the route menu. It may not be noticeable at first, but let me put this here and I'll highlight it to make it a little clearer.

I may be obstructed by the video player, but this little spanner icon has appeared down at the bottom of the menu which could be how you access Creator's Club from. But I guess we will wait and see in Sunday when it get's shown off for the first time.

 

I'm looking forward to the Creators Club, mainly for scenarios. Is there already a release date, i have the 27th in my head, dont know why but i think i heard it somewhere.

This is possibly a question for the Stream today but are there limitations with stock used in scenarios too like with the repaints, or can i put everything everywhere without getting into licensing trouble.
I dont think so but since you arent allowed to share certain liverys.....