Upcoming Release Tsw5 First Look - West Coast Main Line

They've already confirmed it won't be in there at release, and probably never will be.

 

This is almost impossible.

I've never, in my history of working in video games, ever seen a situation where we didn't run all social assets, press releases or anything else public across the social / marketing / PR / licensing teams of any license or brand that was featured or mentioned in said material, so at the point anything public was released featuring the brand, it's almost certain they had a green light.

If not, that would be remarkable and I don't believe for a second that would be the case.

 

I mean, you're right about the industry in general, but DTG is an odd duck.

It is really hard to believe they would put so much work in on the route without a licensing agreement in place, but OTOH, if they did have one, how did LNWR just bail with no consequences? There's gotta be more to the story...

Maybe the leak caused a problem if licensed images went public before the agreement was finalized?

If that's the case all i can say is FU to the leaker!

 

I guess we'll never know.

But it should serve as a reminder that actions usually have consequences. Licensed trains and routes are a privilege, not a right, and anything that the community puts in the public domain may be at odds with the license holders values.

 

Maybe not but makes no sense for LNWR to turn around right before release and say no. They must have seen something to do that right before release. Seems more like a misunderstanding to me because it was after all the photos got shown of the branding.

 

No word from DTG about the leaks either. Maybe if they apologised, looked into it, investigated it and maybe took action then this may of never happened.

 

there’s no way a company can bail after they have already agreed right before release? That’s costing DTG money, people aren’t gonna but it now? I know I’m certainly not and neither are hundreds of other people judging by the protests on SM saying how buggy and unfinished the game is.

 

I mean we are all say here complaining, we are all wasting our time, the director isn’t reading these nor really caring as he’s always said love it or lump it, take it or leave it.

He just makes the TSW community look really bad and feel let down, he should be posting the issues and addressing them individually and updating us. Any good game company would delay the release and answer each issue we have . But he’s been silent.

 

My personal theory is someone from LNWR watched the Dovetail Direct stream and didn't like how everyone swooned over the 390 as the single most important thing about the WCML.

Would want your brand associated with the bog standard package, when your competitor is heralded as the 'deluxe' experience?

 

I'm sure that it was investigated and kept behind closed doors, and rightly so if a non-disclosure agreement was involved.

 

This is an "food for thought" idea but i think its unlikely,the 390 is a core train on the route and is part of the overall day to day operations ,so i don't think it would deminish LNWR,s position in the matter,So making it a ,"deluxe edition," extra ,would in my humble opinion have no effect as that sits in the game marketing side of things

 

Assuming you mean buy rather than but, it would be interesting to compare the number of people in the community who won't buy it over the lack of branding with those who do.

DTG have already spent time and money developing it and they won't get that back if don't release it.

 

You have to buy the 350 pack to get add the 390 tho and branding was removed before the stream.

 

But its none of our business.

 

Yes I meant buy. I’m not going to and I see a lot of other people won’t. They made this in 4 months, they rushed it. A route this big, an operator this big should be done properly or not at all.

 

Blimey, are you new at this life thing or something?

 

Maybe they do not tell us the full story about branding to not ruin relationships with other brands? Like, if they said everything, wouldn't that deter other brands since DTG would be a snitch?

 

An actually reasonable answer

 

It is literally none of our business with what happened between DTG and LNWR. We don't have the right to know what's going on behind the curtains just because we are DTG's customers.

 

Here is a free course in Business and Marketing run by the University of London. Let me know when you've graduated and we can discuss further.
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/uol-business-and-marketing-strategies

 

LNWR aren't really in competition with Avanti West Coast - there aren't many destinations served by both, and where they exist AWC will be considerably faster (and more expensive).

 

Dovetail Games needs to obtain a license to use the logos and brands of railway companies in their games for copyright and intellectual property reasons. Logos and brands are protected properties by law, and their use without authorization could lead to legal action.
Yes, it costs money. Licensing fees can vary depending on the railway company and the extent of the use of the logo or brand. These costs are often included in the price of the DLC (downloadable content) that players purchase.

Railway companies could indeed be very attentive to the quality of the representation of their locomotives and systems in games. If they feel that the level of detail or realism is not up to par, they might hesitate to associate their brand with the product.
It’s a bit like a car brand refusing to see its models poorly represented in a movie or series. They want their image to remain positive and true to reality.

It’s true that the quality of the simulations can sometimes be lacking, and this can certainly disappoint railway companies. It’s possible that Dovetail Games invests more in marketing and presentation videos to attract players, rather than in the development of the simulator itself.
This can give the impression that appearance is prioritized over functionality and realism. It’s frustrating for train enthusiasts who are looking for an authentic experience.

Dovetail Games is all about making money, like any other company. They sell a product that many customers are happy with, and as long as the sales keep coming, they won’t change a thing. It’s just a game: you hop on a train and head to the next station. Take it or leave it; no one is forcing you to buy it. The real power lies with the customers. If they ever decide to stop buying, maybe Mr. Matt will finally hire some decent developers to create a proper railway simulation. Until then, I wonder what gimmicks TSW 7 will bring—maybe a green logo, who knows!

 

TL;DR but I get the jist of it all and what is happening or NOT! Time will tell I guess...But yuppers another BuTT, I suspect there will be concessions made, be similar to LIRR-v2 and the safety systems, and or the Barron stations to simply the way everything looks and what is being stated/Not being stated and what the player base is saying?

And you beat me to the punch My younger daughter likes Green But things may not even be ironed out with TSW10 if it gets that far. From the most recent stream and what little I did watch as I skimmed through it, I may get back to it. It's not looking good, the lighting requires major assistance, some signage is blurry, and yet it spans the height & width of the wall. I'm sure most of this has already been stated more than once. With the way many large corporations operate when it comes to new hires, they will go sniff out and may even scratch sniff all the social media platforms starting with the biggest to smallest to see what is being stated, good or not.

YouTube is the largest video/podcast platform, they will have their media relations all over them like white on rice. Not just as ontherail#1548 has stated, but are people saying as a whole as well as what is being stated about DTG, and Now that TSW5 is about to launch a year after TSW4 that was a year after TSW3 and so on. I IMHHO, they watched the live stream(s) as well as what content is being uploaded by the content creators, I saw one video listed on YT stating something to the effect of "why they are not on board the hype of TSW5" or something like that, I just saw it passing, they could have seen all this and listened to what is being stated and here here on the Forums. They just did not like what they saw and heard. Some corporations expect to be given access to potential employee's and client's social media profiles, whether this was even discussed "it is pure speculation" but all need to do is search without asking, what is the fan base like, how many play and how many purchase, and so on. There was something that caught the eye of media relations that took it to the top of the hill and a halt was put everything. Or something in the agreement was not wet or did not meet the standards for approval. We may never know the full truth.

Oh, and I did see a thread on should the play base contact the LNWR and the announcement stating not to. Again this may have been stated in this thread, DTG has its own PR department, We the player base should not take actions like this, not ever. It's not our place to do so, I can say this with all certainty, without going into major details, be it a news organization or a corporation like LNWR, if they were to ask any question! "At this time I can't comment and will not do so and direct them to the proper dept/people" Let public relations do their job, well at least that is what they should have been trained to do. Now if anyone even if it was a YT creator did make any statements concerning DTG and its parent companies, spoke needlessly out of turn.

Say what you will about how this or that looks and what could use attention, honest but respectful criticism, and leave it at that and let DTG handle the business and relations end.

 

This is a great summary of the situation, I do think with the licensing issue, the price does need to drop to equally represent this. £30 for this is daylight robbery as we are paying for an unofficial 350 now. Surely part of the original price was to pay for the licensing??

 

The 350 is still official as is the route. Plus the Avanti 390 and all the work that has gone into it, if you don't want to pay the price, either don't buy it or wait until the inevitable sale.

I'll be getting the free upgrade but won't be buying a DLC until WCML north is released.

 

Well here we are. 1030 on Monday morning and still no detailed comment from DTG on the issues arising from the stream.

Although they will never do it, I’m inclined to agree about pricing. There should be a minimum of £5 off the full RRP of all packages and the UK starter pack to reflect the state WCML is being presented in. Anyone who has preordered should get a £5 rebate on their respective platform.

 

This is why I never pre-order games when they are announced, I always wait until there has been footage/reviews. Its the same with this. I will most likely still pay for the delixe £53 package as for me it includes the WCML & 390, as well as the "promising" (as we havent seen footage yet) Frankfurt route and flix trains which I am excited for. But yeah, I always leave pre order until the last possible second.

 

Christ,this chat is reaching new levels of toxicity!

 

My point was that you should understand how businesses are run before sharing your opinion on how a business should be run.

 

When things start getting personal, the DTG forums do become a nasty place to be.

 

Then you shouldn’t be on DTG forums talking about DTG and their products until you understand everything about how they are designed, created, tested, marketed and sold, and how the company is ran and managed before sharing your opinion here on any of it.

see, doesn't really work does it, kind of defeats the point of a forum discussing other peoples thoughts, ideas, points and opinions on subjects.

 

On the subject of prices, I was looking at the FAQ last night and I noticed something strange. The individual price for the 390 is disproportionately high for US customers.:

Flixtrain £12.99; €15.99; $16.99

Pendolino £14.99; €17.99; $22.99

I'm used to US prices using inflated exchange rates but I'd like to know the reason for this unusual disparity.

 

Why are you posting AI-generated text?

 

I'm not sure about the particular post you mention, but I've noticed several instances recently that read very artifcially generated.
I don't like it but I think it will become more and more commonplace in the forum going forward.

As DTG are now using AI voices in their VOs ( and who knows what other AI they're using.), I have to assume that AI generated forum posts are perfectly acceptable.

It won't be long I fear before all communications from the community managers will be so generated. Indeed some of them already sound very scripted and formulaic. Or is that just " corporate-speak "? Who can tell? Turing is not around to help us.

 

Crosstie
CrosstAI

 

Wow!! Apart from the white T-shirt, that's an amazing likeness. Of course, being AI, I can shape shift any time I wish. I just did.

 

Hi Jack,

I'm not clear how taking this discussion forward will benefit either of us.

However I will say if you take a little time out and look up how project management and non disclosure agreements work you may have a better understanding on why things are as they are.

Hope to engage positively with you on the forums soon.

 

BECAUSE I AM FRENCH and my ai help me to translate correctly

 

I just wanted to say that Dovetail Games produces a video game and not a professional railway simulation. In this context, they create a beautiful graphical environment that appeals to the majority. Moreover, over the years, they continue to sell their products, and it works, period. The only thing that could make them change or rather evolve in their production is a drop in sales, which has more impact on them than comments on a forum. In short, we always have the choice to buy their products or not.

What I find annoying is that a more modern simulator than TS Classic, and much more beautiful, does not take into account certain features better than its predecessor. Take the GSM-R, for example; the startup sequence in TSW is catastrophic compared to TS Classic. This summer, I acquired the BR 101 Pro IC pack, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised to see the evolution of a product when it is well developed. The fog on the windshield, for example, is visual, but it gives a greater immersion than their standard pack.

So yes, everything is not perfect, still no EBuLa for example. I remember Matt during a stream on TS Classic years ago talking about this feature; it was complicated to implement. Well, they improved the photo option in the simulator, but they don’t think about working on EBuLa because it doesn’t bother anyone. By the way, on this subject, EBuLa already exists in the game if we consider the route information displayed at the top right, lol. So why have trouble transcribing it to the cab screen?

They would do better to focus on improving the scenario creation function, such as being able to start the locomotive from cold, insert passenger announcements, and provide a manual on route creation etc...

will probably buy TSW 5, but only during a sale at Christmas or later. I definitely won’t pay the current price for just three lines without significant new simulation features!

 

I'd recommend writing your own posts in French and then using Google Translate or similar, then.

 

part of the original price is definitely to pay for licensing. Idk how it would cost but im expecting around £5 off. I dont care about the lighting or empty stations that much but all i ask for is LNWR Branding and proper motion sounds.

 

10p maximum from the price we pay would go towards the licensing costs associated with the DLC. That’s £0.10 discount we should get but only if all the branding is removed. Maybe 5p off, which is £0.05, for just the 350 being unbranded. Then add that back in for the extra work removing the branding and we arrive back at the original price.

 

That's ignoring the value that many players place on the branding. For some it's a deal breaker, for others just a lessening of immersion, and the rest couldn't care less.
But there's a value nevertheless and it can be monetized all the way from £0 to whatever the route costs. It might be £5 or maybe £10 but it's there.

 

IMO when you only discuss about the brand, maybe a discount can't be applied because only for some player this is a thing but, when you have another problem in the bag (like sounds and other) maybe it's better think seriously about a little discount.
Or better an improvement of the product to raise up the standard, except obviously the brand

 

If it was all unbranded I wouldn't even want a discount, I just wouldn't buy it.

However with only one of the trains unbranded with a possibility of it being re-added at a later date I'm fine with paying for it.

But to me the one glaring issue is the timetable.

 

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i see lots of people complaining about the time table. Whats wrong with it? Personal i care about the branding and sounds.

 

They only have a quarter of the Overground and Underground services. It should feel way busier on the DC line.

 

The value that a player might assign to the branding can’t be deducted from the development costs. If people don’t buy it because it has one unbranded train then there will be lost sales for sure but would the players who don’t want unbranded trains be persuaded to buy it by a discount. I’m not sure they would as they would still be getting the unbranded train they don’t want. There may be people more intelligent than me who can work out what discount would work but there will be sales in the future for those people who don’t want to pay full price so I don’t think one unbranded train is going to result in DTG reducing the price of the DLC. The same goes for any other issue there may be that makes people think about not paying full price, like a reduced timetable or incorrect sounds, they won’t result in a price drop.

 

Think the main reason WCML should be price reduced is not the lack of branding, but simply because it doesn’t look like a £30 (full price) route. Then there’s the timetable which DTG still haven’t commented on or confirmed whether the gaps are being addressed in advance of going Gold.

 

It's Certainly a thunderous silence from DTG