Tsw3 - The Cat Is Out Of The Bag & The Unofficial Tsw3 Speculation Thread

Theres palm trees up near Oban at Arduaine, perhaps we will get the Oban to Crianlarich line.

 

Could be worse it could of been Sam!

Just playing Devil's advocate, what if there is no TSW3? What have DTG been doing?

 

I had a similar dream where I saw a ScotRail class 170 pulling into (a fairly empty) Inverness station. The thing is, it was totally TSW graphics, that polished was it all is. Then it cut to Matt and Sam talking about the route on a preview stream.
It was a couple of days before the roadmap, the month after "British Route" (later revealed as steam) showed up.

 

Is it me, or has it gone completely dead in regards to bug/content fixes? SOS is particular still has some glaring issues with it, yet its hype and mention died down very quickly. Though are you surprised with how dead the route feels?

There’s not even any mention or talk from DTG in regards to what they are currently fixing. All we seem to get now is articles about interviews from x, y & z person(s), advertisements and/or visiting x preserved railway. Basically all promo stuff and nothing actually about what’s upcoming for TSW.

I knew they talked about having a ‘down time’ but we are really being left in the dark in regards to what’s going on.

 

I've mentioned this in a couple of threads. It probably comes across worse than the usual fire and forget because we were specifically told some of the fixes they pushed through to meet the release deadline were then continuing to be worked on, like the firing arrangements.

And yes, the more I play it the more "dead" and occasionally outright odd some things are. Whether it's the station at Crewe which still looks weird, like a HO building on a OO layout (the footbridge at the north end seems taller than the canopy) or other little things you start to notice. Ah yes, talking of Crewe arrived on the express run from Liverpool for Euston which gets there about 1236 (I was running late as the Jubilee can't keep to the Pendolino times they're using). There were a grand total of about six passengers waiting to board my train and the rest of the station was deserted! FGS, it's Crewe, major junction and interchange point. In 1958 the platform should have been two or three deep with people waiting to board a train for London, the service wasn't that frequent in those days. No station staff just seemed like a ghost town.

 

Maybe a bit of restructuring of their design teams has been going off in the background recently, tied to the start of their new QA/testing leader. Perhaps TSW3 will be a revised version release featuring the new US and German proposed routes together with an updated/bug fixed SoS (sorted out firemen, etc) and that has been supplemented with additional local services and Jinty/2MT type locos - with all TSW2 owners getting the core and (if already owned) the SoS fixes, but without the addon local services and stock.

 

Did anybody catch the 8 up tonight. At 1:15:14 Sam had a little chukle at JD's expense re TSW3. Cat said they need to come up with a code name and Sam replied "it's too late for that now"..

 

Frankly it is too late to try to hide it now.

 

The " Rush Hour " feature didn't last long, did it? Will we ever see it again?

 

No it's not just you I feel the same.

It feels like last year when they held back on releases before the big upgrade just to not have anything redundant in there that may break when the upgrade is done.

Which makes sense if your about to release an update no point in testing on the old version and possibly double the work.

 

It is still there and released on all the routes.

The main Rush hour features was more passengers on the platform during typical peak hours. And asides from SOS and BML they all have that feature.

 

Ohhh that's a good guess. I was already expecting SOS being the third route, but an additional loco might be a very nice thing. Tho, they denied that more steam is in the works. And if they even "announce" the TSW3 routes in the roadmap, why then lie about steam content. So it's sadly not likely, but of course, would be welcomed.

 

Roll on Tuesday…..

I predict zero acknowledgement or reference of tsw3 ,4 more weeks of speculation and some throughly briefed presenters and vetted desktop icons.

 

Aye. Clacton is far more interesting than Southend. Bigger depot, better scenery and more stations.

 

I’d just keep in mind that bigger in TSW = emptier.

 

5 weeks... First Tuesday in August isn't until the 6th

 

I suspect the first we'll hear anything official is when it goes on presale on steam.

Has anyone seen if there's any new achievements in steam database for TSW3?

 

"We don't work on things that aren't on the roadmap." It's already tiring. Why these secrets and speculation? I sadly remember the times when we had a normal roadmap with projects for the current year. Everyone knew and understood what to expect in the future. There were discussions of projects and wishes to developers. Now only blind expectation and fantasies.

It would be more correct to disclose all information about the projects that the team and subcontractors are working on. Monthly review of development progress, discussion of issues and details, assessment of community feedback, beta testing with a community asset.

With this approach, every member of the community would go through every stage of development. As a result, the final product will become dear and close and desirable for him.

 

with steam DB being pretty dead, and nothing really moving around. and the fact that TSW2 is coming off gamepass soon. i suspect the official announcement could be any week now. as TSW2 was announced in June. and as most releases happen in august or September. could we be seeing a September release?

 

More a case of "If it's not on the roadmap we can't talk about it"
Why the secrets and speculation? Go back a year on this forum and see why. If you give people a date and a hint of expectation they take it as a statement of fact written in stone, add in the community suggestions and make THEM also facts, and then rip it all apart anyway.
The community mostly has itself to blame for the lack of communication given the way people speak about the companies who make the game and it's DLC (let alone each other) on this forum

Look even at the posts about the roadmap. Unless there's a new route or DLC announced every time people say it's boring and nothing new. If there's no fixes or detail on fixes people say DTG aren't doing what they should. If there ARE routes then people complain they should be doing fixes and not being money grubbing and if there's NO routes people say they're going elsewhere because there's nothing new to do.

How can DTG get any form of "win" from that?

 

I've been at this for a few years now and I agree. Nothing they have done surprises me and it seems there damned if they do and damned if they don't.

People asked not to be given info until it is 100% confirmed after Rush Hour released so thats what they are doing. Why people are up in arms about it now is beyond me.

The only reason the DB420 is still on the Roadmap is they put it on there Jan 2021. So its the last remaining of the old roadmap when info was given too esrly. And people still complain about how long it been on there.

So I don't get it. You can't have it both ways and the only reason it's how it is is because we asked them to a year ago.

Also people kept saying in January you need to stop making new DLC and fix the existing product, so they are. But there are lots of complaints there is no new DLC.

Well Thats what was asked of them.

 

Fair comment, but that was before the faux pas which led to the speculation about TSW3.

And a little bit of information, particularly on fixes to high profile projects like SoS, would still not go amiss (IMHO) even if just a vague affirmation that, "Yes this x y z is being worked on."

 

Again, if they say "It's coming" it would immediately be "When", "What is it", "Is last gen being dumped", "are the old routes carrying accross", "Have you fixed lighting, sound, immersion controls..." the list goes on, and of course each answer would then be digested and ripped apart.
"Yes this x y z is being worked on." - "When will we get it", "I refunded it ages ago and won't even touch my avatar until it's completely working", "Why wasn't it like this to begin with, we paid you!" blah blah blah

 

There's already a PS4 thread hypothesising that last gen is being dropped and there's been no official denial that this is happening. Maybe it's just a blanket policy of no commenting about TSW3 at all, but it certainly looks bad.

 

I agree with this, I feel communication has slipped backwards a bit to what we enjoyed previously. This is probably to due with again having a new CM team. No disrespect to them as they can only talk about what allowed to and instead this should be directed towards those making these decisions (looking at you the infamous 'Mike' who we never see). I can only hope when this rumoured big announcment does happen that it is considerable and worth the wait. I also agree that this period was described as a period to fix bugs and outstanding issues, but this does not seem to of been the case. I hope someone comes out and says something soon, as I feel now is the right time.

 

At the moment "it looks blank" would be a better descriptor for me... We know things are still going on in the background even though we don't know what those "things" are...
So long as DTG are still on the forums and streams are still happening I'm happy the company isn't going down the pan just yet

 

If it's true that this mistake was deliberate, this period of total radio silence makes absolutely no sense.

If you give small hints ok, but once you come in this thread BASICALLY saying it's official and it's actually happening, you can't pretend like nothing happened for a week. I do not have a psychology degree, nor am I a PR expert. But the way they decided to handle this seems the best and quickest way to make sure the expectations of your customers are completely out of whack with what you are actually developing, and this thread is a perfect example, for all we know this could still be a Rush Hour bundle + a few core and UI improvements they decided to brand TSW3, likely it's going to be bigger, but that's the point. We don't know what we don't know.

 

What's driven customers back to this site day after day for the last two weeks??? Literally nothing has been happening in the world of TSW2 for weeks now unless you count a drip feed of updates, fixes for minor issues or what Rivet have said about the IoW22...
Almost every large post (ie beyond page 3) has been about TSW3. No better way to drive your forum than some speculation based on very little input.

 

I don't know, for me it was intriguing at the beginning, as the "fun" was trying to figure out if it was real or not, once JD confirmed it, it's just a case of what do you expect? Personally it's been years I've lived with having my expectations as low as possible, I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by the obvious, rather than disappointed... anything beyond a 3 route boundle and a few changes to the UI will be a luxury to me. I never liked wild speculation, particularly now that we know official news are coming soon-ish... and most definitely hasn't been the reason for me to look at this forum. I guess it's just me being odd, and not being able to easily understand how normal people work I guess.

 

Personally I am fine with speculation, but I understand that's exactly what it is. This is how the world of the internet works now. You put out a little bit of information and it monetizes itself by getting hundreds of page hits when you don't have to do anything more than let it run (and mod out the idiots)
So for DTG (who hopefully have this site montized somehow) it generates interest and page hits for this forum and their other social media streams and they haven't had to pay a penny to get all that traffic!

Other than that all we know is JD did two things on a stream. Wow... (yes, I am definitely not one of those who will get "hyped" about something so all of this is just idle tattle really)

 

Half the problem with the roadmap is playing to the inability to listen or read of the whiney sods which had resulted in DTG too worried about upsetting people if a change of direction occurs

I personally think just be transparent about what's being worked on, talk about it, engage the community with it BUT put a development calendar up whereby people can look at progress.

Caveat it that nothing on the the calendar is guaranteed, dates, products , locos, route lengths
etc etc. Direct people to it and adopt a less fluffy approach. I think most people are sick of "if it's not on the roadmap" and would prefer "look at the calendar for updates " and READ the disclaimer about nothing being concrete

 

But the very same people would say "what's the point in having a calendar, if it doesn't give you any dates?".

 

There have been six updates to the game in the last two months.

 

honestly, i would prefer new routes and locos not being on the roadmap, and instead DTG giving teasers for routes, would add a lot more fun mystery to it, i would rather say "oooo what could this be?" than "oh look a new route!" and get hyped about it 3 months later at release (depending on the quality of course"

for example this.

 

Totally agree, teasers like this are really fun and build up some nice discussion that clearly shows what people are hoping for. Even if no everyone's hopes are met DTG has an indication of what we want, and usually a big hype train is built up by the time of release.

Out of curiosity, what route was this a teaser for?

 

This is the task of the roadmap, to show the customer a schedule for the development and technical support of the software product.

After all, the DTG team has release plans and they adhere to them. Why can't this be made public?

There is nothing to worry about if the deadlines are not met or the priorities in the development and release of updates change. It's not news to anyone that this can happen in the process of work. That's why there are plans and reports to control the process of completing tasks.

And dissatisfied and critics will always find something to discuss even without a roadmap.

I am convinced that the roadmap should be different. What we have is not a road map. We have announcements two weeks before the release and that's it.

If we talk about TSW3, as a transition to a new platform or global changes, (otherwise it does not make sense) such a decision has a long-term implementation, which could be discussed for a year or more.

 

Then what they've done about TSW3 is right. We've had a snifter of TSW3 being forthcoming, so that counts as a teaser?

 

NEC New York

 

i guess it somewhat counts as a teaser. but also a mistake at the same time

 

It was an *ahem* mistake... which means a planted snapshot so that people can pick up on it

 

Sam left some pretty big shoes to fill. I doubt we'll ever get another CM as good as him.

 

Yeah. Sam was absolutely amazing as CM.

 

Correction: *is

 

He ain't the community manager anymore so saying he was amazing is fine. No correction necassary

 

Yeah... I really miss him. The way he handled the streams, and his ideas were really good. DTG as a company felt a lot more direct and transparent while he was still there.

 

But if the "Summer Holiday" is like "Rush Hour" on the BML then we'll never go on holiday..

 

I live between both and rarely visit either! Though both do have cracking London Pie & Mash shops.

 

I think the roadmap has been tweaked that many times that it's lost all it's meaning and purpose. I still think the original (which showed every route for the upcoming year) was the best. But that only works if they have planned every route for the upcoming year.. I don't know either way but they must have a good idea of what they want to build.

If DTG are going to keep up the trend of putting articles into roadmaps, why not add in a couple of pictures or snippets of information from those working on a route/loco to make it a bit more interesting?

 

Back when Sam was in charge of the roadmap, he said that DTG decide on all the DLCs for the upcoming year around January-March. The scope may change, obviously, as it did with DRA, but the projects are more or less agreed upon.

 

Right now the roadmap is so empty, there is almost nothing which can convince me to spend 1 hour of my time for watching the stream. Back when the roadmap had actual content (even if not in production), i used to watch those.