Train Sim World 7 - Discussion

That also isn't true, at least on Xbox. Making new bundles (Rush Hour for example), still show up in the new releases section

 

Yeah the PS store has an entire section of ‘updates & DLC’ being shown off on the first page of the store.

Releasing a new game has no bearing on if it’s shown at the top of the PSN storefront, it’s what’s most played in your country.

It also shows up in the ‘what’s going on with your games’ pop up in the PS quick menu.

Plenty of options for marketing, they just won’t risk moving away from instalments since they obviously really love the money from it.

We often see how much technical prowess DTG lack with their various teams, I don’t see why marketing would be lacking any less.

 

Would love to hear the Vangelis track that was done for the ‘88 BR corporate vid, that would work so well!

 

Welp...I bought it. I have thoughts.

I was going to wait and get the free version, but I just had to see how the new graphics options and other stuff would play and look on my system and I am an impatient child at heart. Mainly wanted to try the DLSS implementation and to see the enhanced lighting. Due to Steam's generous refund policy, I'm more willing to try things out and take some risks. It's also my birthday this month and I wanted to have a little fun with a new toy.

Before installing it I did a TSW 6 run on the Riviera route to get a baseline as I haven't played any TSW in more than a month.

Then I installed TSW 7 with all of my DLC, ran through all the settings and graphics options to ensure it was set to my liking, and did a run through the same route. Surprisingly I found that I can run TSW 7 on mostly Epic and Ultra settings with DLSS set to quality and still hold a solid 60+ FPS (it's capped by default at 62 for some reason but I decided to leave it as is). I was not expecting that.

Basically I took all of my TSW 6 settings and bumped them up by one notch while making sure things like shadow rendering and view/rendering distance etc were on Ultra regardless of where it was set previously.

Stuttering was minimal despite it being my first run. I was not expecting that either.

For context, in the previous TSW version I ran it windowed at half my native resolution (I'm running at 1080p), with my FPS capped at 40 (more reliable than hoping for a solid 60+ all the time), DX12 enabled via the launch flag, with a mix of Ultra and Medium/High settings. I then used Lossless Scaling to double the frames and upscale from there. It worked well for me to squeeze acceptable performance from the TSW 6 stone so to speak.

Long story short, TSW 7 feels a lot better out of the box on my system at first glance, but I will reserve judgment until I've tried a more demanding route. Likely one of the German ones as one or two of them in particular have been known to bring my rig to its knees in TSW 6 in ways I've almost never seen before.

I might still use LS to smooth things out as my GPU doesn't support Smooth Motion or anything, but it'll be nice if it's no longer the linchpin for me running the game acceptably with the graphics settings I prefer.

I really like the new look with the enhanced lighting and Epic settings for view distance and things of that sort. Everything looks a little less plastic-y and blown out, and the sun shafts and everything else just really do it for me. I know not everyone likes the new look/lighting, but it was one of the selling points for me in the first place. For me it changes how it feels to play the game. Running the route back to back on both versions really made me appreciate the differences.

So for me it's hitting the right spots, and I think I will keep it. I've been playing and loving SimRail and Running Train in place of TSW, but sometimes it's nice to have some vanilla ice cream and turn off my brain a bit. I'm glad I'm able to enjoy it again. There are bugs and grievances with all three of them, but they have their place for me depending on the mood.

I still have another hour to play before the two-hour Steam refund window closes (they do make exceptions, but I don't like to push my luck) so we'll have to see how a more demanding route will fare.

 

As mentioned previously, you do know in Steam you can goto the game and call up the manage my DLC window and untick those DLC’s you don’t immediately want to play. You can then download the rest by gradually ticking the rest of the boxes. If you start TSW before starting the downloads you don’t get locked out of the game.

 

This is a very silly take. The execs bank accounts are tied to game's financial prformance. You know what else is tied to that? Commercial viability of every single product and the ability to develop and deliver further installments. It's just a nature of commercial endeavors, trying to make it sound like you should not be paying for stuff because it magically materializes is just childish.

This is not true. Storefronts also list bundles, so any bundle would be visible when published. Hell, if you wanted to increase visibility, just could just bundle some new stuff in every month or two, and put it out there as a new product. It would increase visibility tenfold.

There are two reasons behind numbered yearly releases. The first is our psychology - we think it's new, and improved, and that's why we fork out the money. This is why Rush Hour hasn't moved as much money as any other numbered entry - it didn't seem new enough. It certainly wasn't because of the content. The second reason is exposure. Even the most obscure games outlet will write about a new game being announced/released. Everyone will notice and information about it will spread, reaching a broader potential customer base. No media cares about a new game bumbdle, so no media will cover it, reducing exposure. No one wrote about Rush Hour, everyone covered TSW3.

Hey, I dislike today's world as much as the next guy, but this is how it runs, sadly.

 

I'm sorry what...? At what point did I say I feel like I shouldn't be paying for stuff? Make sure you actually understand what I mean before replying. No need to get personal by insulting me either

 

Yeah, not sure which noun is an insult, bu you do you.

Again - you say that the yearly releases are tied to exec's bank accounts. This is a childish take. No, the project is not having these releases, so that several people can cash fat checks. Whether they do or don't is entirely irrelevant, if the game sells well they probably do. But that's a side effect, not the cause.

The cause is that there can be enough sales to make the business operate. So yeah, the devs put out a product, we buy it, this generates revenue, and they can keep run their business long enough to churn out another product.

The alternative is not creating a numbered edition, resulting in lower sales, resulting in fewer team members being able to support themselves, resulting in closing the business.

Not that hard. Basic economy.

 

Do those of you on PC just copy all TSW6 mods over from the DLC folder or just wait for new TSW7 mods to appear on TSC?

 

You called me childish, both on your original response, and this one. This is clearly an insult. Not a very good one, but still an insult.

Clearly it is, as they've already proven they can release a yearly bundle for the same game (Rush Hour, TSC), and there's actually no way even DTG can be this oblivious to how much everybody, even the store fronts hate it, as DTG themselves explained last year when they announced buying at TSW 6 add on wouldn't get you previous entitlements as it was too much work for store fronts.

I know how businesses work, pal

 

Any news from DTG about the console fiasco? The UI?

 

This only really works on the getting new eyes on the product side, when to comes to retention it induces fatigue, as people come to see it, rightly or wrongly, in the same light as any low effort annualised cash grab. It's why many games operate more successfully at mitigating this effect on a cycle of breaking up the numbered instalments with named expansions and getting the same benefits but with less expenditure on all fronts by simply marketing a bundled edition when the biennial expansion launches.

 

The UI team will look into it, but it might be a big job.

 

Hoping modders can push out a temporary if not necessarily optimal fix faster.

 

I called the perspective childish, not you personally. I label behaviors, I do not label individuals. Labeling opinions is not ad-personam by definiion.

If you are aware that they already bundled Rush Hour without a number, you would also probably know, what they themselves said, that it had much lower sales than any other numbered version. In this case it makes sense to not go that route, but rather create new numbered entries - if this is what drives more business, that't she reasonable thing to do.

 

Could you provide examples, please? Because when I look at those things that still launch annually (Call of Duty, sports games, to some point Assassin's Creed) I do not see what you mention.

 

That they will then add into TSW8.

 

So anyone who has a different opinion to you has a childish perspective on things?

 

Sadly, Vangelis has past away, otherwise he could make a new tune

 

Yes, this is a good point - and this is what I did last year. But for some reason I had been under the impression that older DLC wasn't going to be available until Sep 15, so I didn't think it would be an issue.

Still, it's all downloaded now.

 

As far as I'm aware, it is the case with consoles, but on Steam you can download everything right now already. And what I remember, it was advertised as such, so not sure where those wrong assumptions came from.

 

aka. "I'll pass it to Engineering..." Oh, like the save game bug which has now come back to bite them in the posterior with Freight Hauler!

 

Yes yes, we know everything is very difficult for DTG.

 

Don't like the way it downloads in these packets, taking a lot longer to download and install over the previous method.

 

Yup, happy to assume it was my mistake.

 

Jetset-James
Yes, most people probably do it by copying all the TSW 6 mods into TSW 7.
That should work for most mods.
I’d probably just copy over a few mods to start with and test whether they work, then copy over a few more.
But you could also copy all the mods over straight away and then test them.
After all, most mods will never get a TSW 7 version anyway.

 

There actually is a little bit of evidence to suggest that player retention is falling on X|S which I admit it's vague at best but I suppose could be loosely interpreted as factual.
Firstly, review counts. Some addons have none whatsoever...and when you consider that folk love to tell the world about their experience (especially if it's bad), I think it's fair to say that something is amiss when so little reviews are present.
Secondly, achievements. Every X|S achievement comes with a playerbase % of completion stat. The base game might see, say, 90% of all users completing the most basic achievement (eg "complete one journey"), but if you look at an extremely well received addon, that same achievement has been known to generate as little as 0.2% of that same player base.

It's not a cast in stone analysis but it could still suggest that (by way of percentages) either nobody is buying addons or TSW has a player retention problem on XBOX.
Remembering that a really basic achievement is present on all addons...so if you own it, you should trigger it.

[edit] as a general overview of TSW's fall from grace from a personal standpoint, I could add that when I purchased TSW2020 I had 13 friends (out of 19) also playing it.....and only 1 of those 13 is registered as playing TSW6!

 

Thank you my friend, as always, very helpful

 

I don't think there are achievements on TSW DLC on XBox, at least not so far as I'm aware as I don't think I've ever unlocked any achievements on a DLC route or using a DLC Loco, so it may show as so few people achieving an achievement on that particular route because they used that particular route to do their first run on the current iteration of TSW.

I may be mistaken though.

 

There used to be but either 5 or 6 stopped it

 

There are huge faults with these.

One, a DLC needs to be bought to be reviewed. Because people are much more likely to buy a game than DLC for it, the numbers will always be significanlty higher than for DLCs. And DLCs are not made equal either - I imagine pretty much every player that is aware how good WCML Preston - Carlisle will pick it up if they are interested in UK content. The sales for something like Class 90 are nowhere near close, because the DLC is generally considered sub-par. It's not possible to say that player count is dropping because more sales were made with Preston - Carlisle than Class 90. Worse DLC - less sales - less reviews. When a good DLC comes the sales will bump back.

Fault two is versions - if I find WCML Over Shap awesome and I write a review, I sure as hell am not going to go into the store to review the TSW6 version and TSW7 version when they land.

As for the achievements method, it would be a better indicator if there was actually a way to say that people have bought a game. Even if less people had the simplest achievements in TSW6, you cannot compare it to how many have TSW5. Things like being on Game Pass for two years, of free weekends during Free Play Days are severely skewing anything you might want to say about these results. Additionally, plenty of folks might out of curiosity download the free pack, and leae disappointed, as they just find the training center, and that's it. It still counts for the game stats, despite these people not really doing anything.

Additionally, Xbox tracks achievements across all people who launched the game. So the moment you download the Free Pack, the fat that you don't have any achievements for WCML over shap is recorded. So say - we have 100% launching the game, maybe 50% having the actual game (not just the training center), and then a very small subset of them having some DLC with achievements. So, yes, maybe 0.2% of players overall got this specific DLC achievement, but that's because he gets compared across EVERYBODY. This 0.2% of all players might be for example 25% of players that purchased DLC.

 

I did say it was vague at best and could only be loosely regarded as factual, but even I have to concede that 0.2% of any potential userbase is extremely low....however you choose to dissect the figures. I mean, you can even argue the fact that TSS has already proven consecutive player count has stagnated on PC - and considering those extra issues surrounding TSW on consoles as well as an increased selection of train games now available, there's nothing to suggest that the same scenario hasn't occurred (or potentially worsened) across console platforms.

Another point of note is that during the TSW2-TSW3 era that figure typically hovered around 3% (same circumstances, different game version), so that in itself represents a tenfold drop in user-retention when compared to the last TSW that included DLC achievements.

I openly agree that it's impossible to determine exactly how TSW is performing on XBox, but sometimes you get a niggling feeling (a hunch, if you like..based around changing patterns) that all is not well.....and if a hunch is good enough for James T Kirk, it's good enough for me

 

Just a quick PSA for PC, if you're using the Better Shadows mod (https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/mods/c3-train-sim-world/c19-patches/i5879-better-shadows) then disable it, as it messes with the enhanced lighting (i.e. sky color being too dark).

I reset all my ligting / visbility related engine.ini / godmode tweaks, but forgot about this one, and was wondering for a minute if the sky is really the desired color... turn out not