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

Sounds riveting, where do I sign up? What about US freight services? Do they just spend the full 90mins twiddling their thumbs watching for signals?

 

And most people do have interest in multiplayer. If it was ever implemented and if you don't like it, don't use it

 

Seeing how Creator’s Club is essentially completely broken on PS5 - none, none at all.

 

My kid plays one on roblox called stepford County railway. It works quite well. Dtg could probably do a roblox version of tsw. Won't have no complaints about quality that's for sure.

 

I’d rather they just get the game consistent and with more single player features and game additions before cutting another gash in the experience that Adam’s team have to try and sew up 12months later and Sam gets brought out to quiz Matt and apologise for

 

I'm afraid this is the drawback of many multiplayers

My uncle, who was a professional signaller, tried to play Train Driver 2 in multiplayer. At first he was totally ignored by players manning neighbouring stations. The boys were too busy fooling around and making fun of their less experienced colleagues to respond to calls from an unfamiliar signaller and actually direct the movement of trains. Eventually, the uncle himself was attacked and insulted by these railway enthusiasts, so he simply hung up.

All in all, I guess only VATSIM holds some level of culture and professionalism. It's the only multiplayer with which I have good memories.

 

I had the same thing with Elite Dangerous. Thankfully never got "ganked" which apparently is still a thing even now, but I was in a system where there were other players, put up various friendly "o7" messages and just got ignored. In the end, I went back to the menu and resumed my game in SP. Again, pointless. I think it works to some extent on tablet games but it's more co-operative play. For example Hay-day where your team competes in a weekly Derby against other teams for a place in the league with in game prizes and promotion/demotion. Or combat games like Rival Kingdoms where again you are in a team and either play against other teams in a "War" to see who gets the most points with in game currency as a prize or team events where each player contributes points to a ladder which opens up more prizes such as upgrade materials. But I don't see how this sort of gameplay could be applied to a train sim, unless you start putting certain aspects of the game behind an achievement wall. Frankly I would prefer a decent structured career mode, something similar to a virtual airline, over a half baked implementation of MP.

 

I agree only half. MP wouldnt intrest me at all. Same for announcements, they are under copyright of the operators usually.

But i totally agree tsw3 needs some high improvements & entire new features.
My personal focus would be improved lighting, routes which can be extended & connected. Also a rolling stock pool, which can be updated easy without ending up in having 4 different locomotive versions of the exact same type. Its just ridiculous.

 

I have zero interest in MP. Every minute spent coding a MP on a Train Simulator is wasted time in my opinion. I feel the same about MSFS MP.

 

Not interested in MP either, but I am surprised how high it is on the want list compared to VR when we had surveys.

 

What if TSW 3 is PC and 9th gen only because the new features they have added are Dynamic weather, improved lighting with ray-tracing, lightning, arcs and sparks.

But they still continue to release the routes for both TSW 2 for the 8th gen and TSW 3 for Pc and 9th gen.

They already are cooking the routes for 2 separate versions on consoles already so its not like it will be extra work.

If its going to be called TSW3 and not TSW2:Place title here, then obviously there is a big change coming.

The game is already maxing out 8th gens capabilities so they can't expect to get the same new features. And they can't do ray-tracing. So I just don't see them able to add any new features on 8th gen.

And they have said that they weren't going to hold back the game on PC/9th gen consoles. So it would make sense that TSW3 is PC/9th gen only and the still continue to support 8th gen on TSW2 for another year or so.

The more we are waiting word the more I feel they are holding back because they know there is going to be backlash over something. And dropping 8th gen is what it is most likely.

 

Yeah, I think they need to bite the bullet really, I can forsee some long awaited improvements like lighting, memory, dispatcher etc, but at a cost, they need to push the positive aspects. I have a PS3 and skipped PS4 and went straight to PS5, but sure there was a period as things moved beyond PS3 where I couldn't play the new games, its part and parcel of the cycle, you then get new hardware and can catch up on stuff you missed when it first released.

Looking long-term the game needs to progress and right now it needs to consolidate the items that are barely working or rarely present and get a clear feature-set that performs well. Once it has that platform it can push on the expansions of scope again. So they have to be very positive about the way forward and not get held back by old hardware. That might even mean some PCs won't be able to play, maybe the minimum specs will go up to 16GB RAM for example.

TSC has been a very stable and similar engine for many years now, so there will come a point where TSW just pumps out content on the same platform, but they aren't there now by a long way. Can you imagine if they said that was the end of development of the TSW engine at this point?

 

Great points!

 

Wow, so mutch Multiplayer "hate" here, I wasen't expect that. I would love a Multiplayer in TSW 2! One of the main reasones are how unpredictable real human players are. A real random factor. Yes there need to be are autokick feature, if you are blocking the treck for to long or don't take any actions for some time, but on a multiplayer server you have to careful every time. You didn't know if it is a normal A to B run or maybe stop and go run with many danger signals. In the timetable mode for excample you know after some which run or line is just streight A to B. With the combination with an dynamic or many even a human dispetcher, who can intervene and maybe for example stop a regional service to let a delayed express service through would it be awesome.

And I'm talking about servers where many railway enthusiasts will try there best to be on time and have smooth railway operations, but like in real life there will be disturbances. Yes there will be peaple who just want to ruin the game for others, but I think we diden't have to cancel a really good feature because of them. And with good kick and ban management on the servers there, Ithink there can be a fun muliplayer experiance for (almost) every one.

 

Moving forwards I think a fair balance would be required to suit Gen8, 9 and PC users (low to high end specs).

If TSW3 is in the pipeline then I think it needs to be Gen 9 & PC only, however, they should still support TSW2 for reasons being that not everyone can afford a Gen 9 console or high spec PC (I fortunately can) especially with the cost of living crisis.

The game needs to move on and can't be held back so surely that would be a good compromise.

 

'anyone else wondering where Matts been?

 

He popped up on the 8up stream in the chat. I assume he is super busy now that he is executive producer.

 

Also when was the last time they said that they currently have no intention to stop support for 8th gen on TSW 2. Last time I can find was over 1 year ago on the streams if thats the case then "currently" could have passed by now. Maybe someone should ask the question for the next Roadmap stream.

 

I think there’s still plenty to go at in this lot as well

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/question-thread-roadmap-stream-5th-july.56202/

 

Could be his time's being taken up by managing the development and QA of the rest of the bugfix/Pres. Crew releases so they can be released and the teams can get back to making new stuff. I'm all for that.

 

Looks like being on a server with real railway enthusiasts is like playing with AI. So like Singleplayer?
I guess 90% of all players would go [edit by Protagonist - watch the language] in MP and real railway enthusiasts would soon be back to SP or dont see enough difference.

 

Sorry, but did't you read my post? I've said the opposite. No, it's not like singleplayer, because the AI is always on time and human player make mistakes and are not always on time. Maybe you are always on time, but all the safety systems on the german on british Routes i made mistakes and have delay.

And for me there are no "real" railway enthusiasts,. just railway enthusiasts. I hate to exclude peaple. What is a "real" railway enthusiasts for you? And I will say the oppsite of your guess. I think there will be 90 or maybe 95% "normal" drivers who try to be on time and a small number of people who want to try to ruin the game. And therefore there have to be a ban and kick mechanism on TSW Multiplayer Server.

 

For me multiplayer and co-op are two different things. Multiplayer would be chaos unless there were private servers but in all honesty I think DTG are way off implementing that. As for co-op, I can see that being a laugh on certain routes like playing as a guard for example where you have control over the doors and signal to the driver. Or I remember Sam saying he always wanted to have a few players play as passengers, personally I think that one is a bit daft but a guard might be a laugh.

TSW3 when it comes, will it be an upgrade to the existing engine or will it be a new game? Will it cut off Gen8? Will it import TSW2 routes?
I'd love to know the answers to these questions. Could they afford to cut off Gen 8? I think DTG would get a backlash from a lot of players.

Let's say they did a new game, TSW3, and they cut off Gen 8. Will they continue to support TSW2 or will that be cut off too?
Will these questions no wonder DTG are cowering. The longer they leave it will only make it more difficult. I remember DTG saying something like they wanted to be more open and honest especially with the big stuff, hahahaha yeah right. DTG is just the same as any other games company and only want us to know what DTG allows us to, this is why the leak by JD is just too funny and why now DTG on streams are trolling us to try and save face.

 

TSW3 should cut off Gen 8 Consoles and move forward.

 

For me they're one and the same. Anything where one person is reliant on the correct application by another (in this case driving a train properly) would count as multiplayer, and anything relying on others in this would mean me not doing that thing.

 

The same experience could be provided in SP if the dispatcher could cope with dynamic events and an intelligent AI with random events but without gankers and griefers so a more enjoyable experience.
Give us dynamic events in SP first before even thinking about MP

 

Gen 8 is finished, it's time to let it go, Gen 8 has always been the thorn in TSW's side, be it TSW2020 or TSW2.

 

Your left leg and your right arm are finished, let them go, you don't need them anymore. Go forwards.

 

Different things and i guess you know it but i would like to know why you feel so strong about them.
Would you say the most money is in console and there most money is still made selling to Gen 8 people? Do you as a developer have insight into this?

Would you agree that Gen8 is holding back TSW2 and potentionally 3 since much time has to be spend making sure it runs on those ancient consoles and features like better lighting cant be implemented? Or is this easy?
Then why was Gen8 an excuse many times why things are not moving forward?

 

this is why it is where it is yes

 

I think I'll be the contrarian here and say that IMO Gen 8 is not holding back TSW, or to be more clear it's not holding it back more that the amount of resources DTG wants to put in a route, and dropping old gen wouldn't rally make that much of a difference, and those are my arguments:

• It is already possible to release two slightly different versions of the same DLC, one for PC and new gen, and one for old gen. This has been happening for a while.
• DTG has already made clear that they don't care (enough) if some route consistently crash on older hardware, I still remember SKA crashed every time near Köln when I still had the Xbox One, apparently the same goes for DRA and DCZ.
• Series S seems to be the biggest threat right now, from what I understood it doesn't have enough RAM to keep up, and it crashes fairly often on heavier routes like DRA and DCZ, and what's worse is that you can make a different DLC for 8th and 9th gen, but the XSS and XSX stuff has to be the same, so possibly they might decide to cap new DLC to the XSS performance rather than 8th gen, so there will alway be a bottleneck around the current DCZ/DRA level
• If enough people are still on old gen, would it be the correct financial decision to let them go? Less people that pay for DLC -> less resources that can be used to make them -> worse DLC
• A lot of the quality control issues, and criticism for the current DLC IMO do not stem from 8th gen, bad scenery, bugged trains, bad lighting, etc.... is not a 8th gen problem. Yes, the BR101 IIRC is more resource intensive than other locos, but it's not like it can't run on 8th gen.

What would actually make more sense is to have the option to change settings on console.

 

I haven't seen this said by DTG. Several commentators on here, yes, but not DTG.
Yes they put more effort into making things work for older consoles, but they develop on and for PC and then dial things back for older machines.

Of course if DTG developed using best practice, optimised and so on then maybe there wouldn't need to BE the issue that routes made four years ago still cause issues on old gen machines (which weren't old gen at all back then) but still...

 

That's not being contrarian; that's what DTG has actually said.

Again, simple business logic: If 8th gen development wasn't still profitable, it would be dropped. This will happen naturally at some point. Meanwhile, DTG has indeed moved forward. They are now developing for gen 9 and more modern PCs, but still downscaling for 8th gen to keep their largest current player base in the loop.

Dropping 8th gen now will hurt those players, hurt DTG financially, and help nobody.

 

I'll agree with you that gen 8 is holding TSW back when TSW has lighting on par with other gen 8 games like Hitman, Assassins Creed and RDR2, all of which have terrific lighting.

 

In 'Diesel Railcar Simulator', the author has managed to implement random delaying of AI trains. And it really works great! Moreover, the AI signaller can sometimes change the aspect to 'clear' on a semaphore with a delay. So the player always has to stay alert and watch the semaphores attentively. Instead of levitating around the train in search of plush dinosaurs

 

Whilst 8th gen sales still justify the extra work commercially then they will continue to be supported. The day it isn't profitable for DTG to release new routes on 8th gen will be the day support ceases.

 

That day has come.

 

I wonder if rockstar will release gta 6 on gen 8, And tone down all the graphics to bring in the small amount of extra income. Or would they be thinking... if these gen 8 owners are too tight to buy the latest tech, are they even gonna buy gta 6.

 

Which day, oh gawd have i missed something exciting.
Oh no of course not, this is the DTG forum.

 

And if DTG does abandon gen8 and if ( as I suspect), there's no great leap forward, no rapid improvement and no shiny new features in the game, who're ya gonna call, who are you gonna blame then?
As has been pointed out, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of players still on older hardware, supporting the revenue stream. And I have never seen any actual, verifiable evidence that older hardware is in any way slowing down the development of TSW.
And, let's not forget that there are uncountable ( and largely ignored in this discussion ) players using old, creaking PC's. Are they to be abandoned, too?

 

The problem is, is there a general setting that DTG can "switch" that just makes the game better if they drop gen 8? How would you see TSW improving if gen 8 is dropped?

Let's say they decide to up the minimus spec for TS, would this result in a better game?

IF Dovetail decides to start using UE5 or features like RayTracing, I get why to drop old gen, but otherwise the quality of a route depends on the amount of work DTG is willing to put into it. BML with +1000 services is on Gen8, and even if they drop old gen it would be naive to assume that every route will have that kind of timetable, because the bottleneck is not gen8, but the amount of time needed to create that timetable. Same goes for the BR101, the G6, the Class 465, the BR187, etc...

Like, Is the BR420 going to be better if it releases only on gen9? Probably not, why would it? The difference is not the platform, but who and how well creates these DLC.

Small immersion improvements, maybe more static stock on sidings? Maybe given that XSS is already struggling (crashing regularly) with DRA and DCZ.

The game is already castrated on new gen with a lower rendering distance, and if you are on PC you can get the game looking as good as you want with .ini mods, again what we need is more flexibility to make the game max out our systems without having to rely on modifying files.

Considering DTG is already struggling to meet basic QA goals, I don't think they'd want to put in the effort to fully take advantage of the extra headroom offered by dropping gen8 anyway.

A few more examples: Would the coupler issue been already resolved if gen8 was dropped? Would we have EBuLa if gen8 was dropped? Would Skyhook have done a better job with the BR187 is Gen8 wasn't there? I honestly can't see why those would be related in any way.

 

Has already happened a few times over the years!

 

Considering that game probably won't be out for a few more years at minimum, I highly doubt it to be the case

 

Whilst true, it's the third parties that have been carrying TSC, not dtg.

I still fail to understand why people think gen 8 is holding this game back. Im on gen 9 and I don't think gen 8 is holding the game back.

 

Those features you mentioned could've been implemented by DTG. If they couldn't do it for gen 8 for whatever reason, then they could've implement it for GEN 9, PC only. But DTG has yet to implement ebula and other features that people want to see so they'll blame gen 8 when in reality it's DTG. One could argue that DTG is holding this game back but hey let's just blame older hardware. It's much easier to do

 

That's the point. They can make different DLC for gen8 and 9 already, so I don't understand why it's still such a big topic. I would have agreed wholeheartedly before gen9 got separated from the main game... but now...

Interesting! As I said, unless there are plans for major core changes, I still can't see it making that big of a difference, but perhaps history proves me wrong.

 

I’m not blaming anything or anyone. Also, it won’t be me dropping gen 8 development it will be DTG.

I’m only putting what I’ve seen and what we know together and looking at it how DTG might look at it. Most people are still looking at it from a player’s perspective and not even thinking about the development side of it. This decision, one way or another, will be taken from the perspective of the future of the development and not solely on the current number of players still on gen 8 consoles (which itself is lower than everyone is claiming it is and getting smaller every day), and they will be looking further forward than the next year or so.

I don’t think DTG will go bankrupt if gen 8 players can’t buy the new content. There is a new game coming, called TSW3, and I don’t believe it will be TSW2 again. There has to be a clear reason it is a new title. I think it is in order to reduce the expense of developing TSW by reducing the number of builds they need to make and test and also allowing the improvements in quality all those open letters were calling for. Their last launch did not really work on gen 8. This one won’t need to. It must have been costing DTG a fortune trying to sort out the abominations of this last year. Has everybody forgotten all of that happened?

I have to be clear that this isn’t me calling for it. This is what I believe DTG are doing. And yes, I could be wrong.

 

As has been said, other games on Gen 8 have fantastic lighting and as DTG already do separate versions for Gen 9 then why are they not doing decent lighting for the Gen 9 versions? For me what is holding back TSW is DTG themselves.

Many will disagree but if they released a proper editor it would transform the game but they do not see it.

To me that is being pedantic. If a game can have more than one player then yes technically that is multiplayer but in reality there is a difference. In multiplayer usually you can do the same as any other player co-op is different. Either there are some things you can't do or you have a specific task.

Co-op in TSW could mean that you are assigned to do a guard and guard only, for this I can see many people going for it but just having a multiplayer where all comers drive trains? I see that as chaos.

 

i wonder how many of these 8th gen users are still actively playing the game and buying DLC.

someone posted a while back that if you take the sales info, there's x amount of people who own TSW2 (x equaling millions)
So that means it's popular and earning DTG money... but when you look deeper, a hell of a lot of those people who are in the statistics have never played more than 5 minutes on the game, a lot never even started the game.

makes me wonder how the figures are skewed by all the people who will add any game to their machine when it's offered for free... i guess that's mostly PC users who could get TSW for free from the epic gaming store... to try and entice them away from using the steam store.

But TSW2 can be had for about £2 at times in the playstation store, how many people got a playstation store gift card for xmyth / birthdays, used it to buy the game they wanted, and had a couple of quid left on it, so looked for any way to use that money up... and adds some weird game called TSW2 to the basket just because it was cheap,

then once it's been bought realises it's a train game and ignores it, never to start it as they like shooting games.

 

I don't know about that. I've got an early build of ts2014 and my old radeon hd (512mb) can play it, If i put the radeon hd in my current system and try to load tsc it wont work at all, crashes on startup.


Focusing on the dtg routes, over the years as the scenery has become more dense and textures have a higher level of quality, you need faster hardware to keep up with it all.

We will see when tsw3 comes to light.