So been playing NTP to get into the spirit ready for the Blackpool route, and been having huge issues with passengers. 1. Majority of stations have 0 passengers at all, no one is getting onto the trains. 2. Starting a service with a fully loaded train of passengers. You open the doors at the start as the instructions tell you too, every single person (Hundreds) gets off the train, and not a single one gets on. Driving an intercity express service with no passengers, to empty stations is boring as hell. Completely kills any desire to drive this route.
For example this is Huddersfield at 10:50AM Not one single passenger present at the station, or on my train. The tunnel after this station also has the rain coming through it lol.
Not surprised, seems like most of the old routes have taken similar damage during the transition to TSW4.
Lack of passengers especially just kills my enjoyment of a route. Makes it feel like I'm the only moving/living thing in the entire map.
This is also true for me with some custom scenarios being broken or passenger services have no passengers to board or even no passengers at stations. I mean for a passenger service of any kind (timetable, custom scenario and yes even free roam paths) passenger loads should be possible. Otherwise driving a passenger train is completely useless. And TSW becomes more a freight game to drive an empty train from A to B, B to C.
You´ll find the passengers enjoying the night in the Class 101´s legendary comfy seats right over there at Newton Heath Depot. And Huddersfield in TSW2 Just adding to the reasons to keep that version running.
I mean my game looks like the Huddersfield pictures right at the start. I open the doors and every person on board leaves at once, it looks just like that.
Most of the passenger spawn points seem to be busted except for a few. I spawned at Huddersfield and saw no passengers, while at Leeds City I saw some but only on some of the platforms. Hopefully this is linked to the NYT issue and fixing one will fix the other.
This route is always like that for me. I drove it just this weekend past and was shocked to see a single passenger get on at Stalybridge or Ashton-Under-Lyne, one of those. And he had to walk down a long length of platform just to get there! I was surprised, wondering why he was the only one on the entire route. I'm not a programmer, but for the life of me can't imagine how hard it would be to institute even a quick fix until you had time to overhaul the whole passenger system. Every train starting at a platform to come with 1/3 passengers who stay with the train until the last station how hard can that be? At least that way we wouldn't be driving empty trains. The other thing that blows my mind is watching dozens of them all standing there staring at the open doors. They seem completely deaf to my telling them there are no more trains coming behind me - I'm their only hope of ever getting to Manchester Victoria in the rest of their pixelated lives, but do they listen? Nope, just stare vacantly at the train as the doors close. This is a magic piece of software in so many ways, but just imagine how good it would be if they skipped a release and used that dev time to fix some long-standing problems. Right now, they're all busy beavering away on the next release, the marketing types reaching deep into the hyberbole locker, the video clip folk getting the images and music all syncing - all for the same old passengers, who seemingly can't wait to abandon the train the second we open the doors. Is it really too much to ask? Are we being demanding divas to expect normal passenger operations in a train sim? I remember I was commenting on this passenger issue in another thread, about six or eight months ago, and the CSR reminded me that if I noticed any passenger anomalies, I needed to cite the route, schedule, and train, complete with pictures, expert testimony, and sworn affidavits. Really? Just look at every route, every station, every train and you'll see something amiss with passengers. It doesn't ever take a long, hard look to find something amiss here...we're not talking a 'hunt for D. B. Cooper' level of complexity. That said, though - I've recently upgraded my computer to an RTX 4090 on a 34" OLED ultrawide monitor and I have to say the graphics are fantastic at that level (with a nod to JetWash and his BeyondUltra settings). The colours deep and rich, the motion smooth and stutter-free. Great! Now I can see rain falling in tunnels and sad, empty trains in rich technicolour, lol. DTG - please, go that extra mile. Achieve excellence, rather than simply strive for it. These passenger problems have plagued TSW since inception. Really, isn't it time to fix them once and for all? We're only in early November, there should still be time to add it to the TSW5 To Do list if not on there already, IMO.
That broke with introducing tsw3 back then! Not worth making another thread, there are at least 12 old ones. Same for the tea tankers numbering (123456), broke with tsw2 and the mk2 numbering broke with tsw3. (My cashflow on dtg broke after tsw4, will enjoy all the discounts in future. Only exceptions are routes like JTs "Preston Blackpool". I want to support this franchais, but im not accepting forced to become a beta tester over and over. )
I'm curious about the passengers on the Blackpool route. Attention to detail seems to be the hallmark of JT, and if all that effort is plagued by empty trains and hundreds of passengers on each platform staring into their own souls rather than stepping onto the train...well, it will be a thorn in their paw for sure. There are only two possibilities as I see it - either they're forced to accept that passengers are a DTG thing and they have to work with what they've been given, or they've found a way around it and managed to turn their attention to detail there also. Will be interesting either way...not a good image to see empty trains pulling into Blackpool every morning, no matter how beautiful your scenery and infrastructure are. Fingers crossed we're all blown away in this aspect also.
Of course the problem is that whatever they do, it could be broken by a future update. As we've seen from this thread, DTG is very good at accumulating an ever-increasing amount of technical debt.
Pro-tip: use God Mode and set ts2.passenger.DensityScale, ts2.passenger.DensityScaleNew to 10.0 - 20.0 (you can go waaaaaaaaay higher too) and set ts2.passenger.ForceDensityScaleNew to 2, you can use the menu in-game, or via the dynamic ini feature so it persists permanently and not just for the current session. There's also ts2.passenger.MaxPlatformPassengers which, according to the description of the variable, controls the maximum amount of passengers for the whole map, which is a little confusing to me because the name of the variable sounds like it controls the maximum amount of passengers for each platform, and the default value is 100 (at least that's what I remember when I loaded up Vorarlberg)
Doesn't work here it seems, still no passengers on the platforms, and all the passengers that spawn on the train leave as soon as you open doors at start.
This has been an issue since TSW 2 which was also an issue in TSW 3. I'm not suprised that this is an issue still since DTG haven't bothered to sort the passenger issues out
Oh then it's probably the exact same bug that affected Bremen-Oldenburg and Mainz-Koblenz (it got fixed for those though), but I noticed some weird behaviours in general too. Sometimes a ton of passengers do spawn, but sometimes barely or not at all. And another thing I have noticed is that passengers first start spawning when you are close to or at the station, and not before. There are some variables about max. platform and station distance for passenger spawning, but it made no difference when I set them to a way higher value than normal, there's also a variable about max. camera distance for passenger navigation to happen but same result. I'm still experimenting with them but my theory is that something has changed; or broke (again lol) in the core game. For passengers getting in to the train, if I remember correctly, I saw blueprints in the TSW PC Editor about boarding probabilities for passengers so it's probably because of that, but I couldn't open it, so I moved on.
You have to be fair here this wasn't an issue caused by TSW4 because, as said above, it were 3 that done it. It is a very small issue in the grand scheme of things but highly annoying as well.
Not really a small issue. Lack of passengers, poor seasonal clothing, weird passenger behavior are serious immersion destroyers and they affect just about every route. Clearly not a priority for DTG because passengers haven't improved through several iterations of the game. Gimmicky stuff like umbrellas are not the answer. And, outside of stations, the TSW world is still devoid of human habitation. Driving trains is what we're about and it's less fun than it could be in a world without people.
Workaround: Don't look at the platforms (except looking where to stop). Obviously not ideal, and the issue needs fixing.
In my case they take one look at the driver and decide to wait for the next one, even if it is the following morning. As regards the world in general being empty, GTA SA in 2006 had routines for pedestrians walking around the various areas (and getting unalived with my shotgun) so it ought to be easily doable. Though that said, looking at other games much as I love Snowrunner, all the maps are completely devoid of any life, AI vehicles or people - in the case of the latter not even any static models. The excuse of the lone venturer sorting out a devastated area might have worked on the first few maps but wears thin later in the game.
Wasn’t the Rush Hour routes supposed to improve passenger activity especially during peak times? Sitting at a station waiting for passengers to board which in some cases is so very slow,when clearly there isn’t a passenger in sight is quite bizarre. Passenger content is a big part of the game imo and am forever hoping that it will be greatly improved one day to add to the realism and enjoyment.
I suppose how bigger an issue it is, is very subjective, as I would rather have no passenger than trees for example and it isn't game breaking. Like I say still is highly annoying. The umbrellas are naff but I think that the the passengers on ECML (and I would assume other TSW4 routes) are better as there seem to be plenty of them and very few venturing over the yellow line, though this is like a football team losing 4-1 and the gaffer congratulating them on getting that one goal. That last point deserves a thread of it's own really as outside the stations there being no people is an immersion breaker, even if it were static models outside houses, or people walking over footbridges, or a farmer in a tractor ploughing/ appropriate process for season just small things like this would do a lot for immersion: like Tesco say 'Every little helps'.
Yes bur DTG being DTG didn't actually do any of those improvements. They only increased the number of passengers in stations
I agree with your points on the passengers and have had the same issue with HRR. It's a shame as both of these routes have a variety of rolling stock and services to play but they fall flat without the passengers. Wasn't NTP also on sale last week? I don't even think DTG should be able to sell the route in its current state.
I'd definitely agree to wanting trees over passengers. But not having passengers makes it feel like a model train set, rather than "simulating" a railway I guess.
What do you mean 'in it's current state'? NTP is certainly my second favourite route currently and I have had many hours of enjoyment on it so I do honestly wonder what makes it unsellable. The peak is still one of the best things in the game.
I'm talking about the passengers; if I'm running passenger services on a route that has no passengers I wouldn't say the game is in a good state. I'm happy you enjoy the route and actually for an older offering, the scenery and 'route feel' hold up pretty well however for many players, having workable passengers is a core part of the immersion which unfortunately is broken.
Oh right sorry, the way I read it there were other issues too. Like I said above the passengers missing are a very annoying issue but not big enough to make the route unsellable, however if it were missing trees, for example, that would make it unsellable. In it's current state it is perfectly sellable, just not perfectly immersive.
Honestly I'd like NTP and TVL to get a tune up, fix passengers and have the lighting upgraded to ToD4.
And have a loco DLC each and spiced up timetables, especially for NTP. Very much agree with you mate.
The only reason I don't drive them more than I do is quite a few of the English Electric Locos give me a headache lol. While I absolutely love the Class 37, it causes my physical pain xD.
That is a shame for you especially if you enjoy them. I suppose you could literally say it's a real headache couldn't you!
No problem, and maybe my comment could be taken as over-exaggerated however I do feel this route deserves better and agree with you and Fawx that fresh timetables and TOD4 would be a great addition ... as well as fixed passengers!
The point about the TSW world being devoid of people is that DTG know how to solve that problem. There were a few brave souls wandering the streets of Cumberland and other locations in the very first TSW route. And we've seen occasional glimpses of track workers in other routes since. So the world could be populated. Is it a technical issue with memory or is it that the developers don't think it's necessary in a train sim? Whatever the reason for the post- apocalyptic environment, it's counter- immersive and always has been. We've learned to accept and perhaps ignore it, but it's always in the back of my mind.
Well, it's July 2024, and NTP is still void of passengers. Agree with other posters; completely destroys the immersion of what is otherwise a very nice route.
