I wish there was a separate section for released DLCs on the forum. Each individual DLС should have its own sub-forum with topics: developer's presentation; first impressions and reviews; detected errors; community fashion; community suggestions for improving the DLС. Separately independent section of the forum - technical part with sub-forums on various platforms.
The proposed changes sound interesting. Bringing all platforms into one group will streamline things and help us all because we'll be able to see any hints and tips that other platform users post. I agree that the TSW3 launch forum should probably be taken down as the game launched 4 months ago but the idea could be used for the launch of each new route so that for say the first month after launch we all have a specific forum to post helpful tips and any issues specific to that route so that they don't get lost in the Tech forum.
Awesome. Never understood why the forum was separated by platform when the game is essentially identical on all platforms. The differences in platform are mainly relevant when it comes to technical issues, not general gameplay discussion. I found myself posting all my gameplay questions in PC forum even though I play on PS just because it was most active
But as said by others, Console and PC players have shared the Suggestions, Technical Reports and Off-Topic forums since the start, but I agree with you
I agree, mixing PC and consoles forums will add more confusion and delay... Having a PC forums and merging consoles together would be easier. One for the staff here is, when posting a topic out -looking for feedback, dont post it in the most popular topic
There’s a topic in the PC forum about safety systems in a Swiss route - this is not PC specific There’s a topic in the PC forum about an upcoming German route - this is not PC specific There’s a topic on the PC forum about the locked door on the 1972 stock - this is not PC specific There’s a topic on the PC forum about how dark it is in routes - this is not PC specific There’s a topic on the xbox forum with speculation about Rivet’s new route - this is not xbox specific There’s a topic on the PC forum with speculation about Rivet’s new route - this is not PC specific There’s a topic on the PS forum with speculation about Rivet’s new route - this is not PS specific Now, is any of this sinking in. Lots of topics need to be accessed by all players and as you can see from the few examples above there is a single topic being discussed in at least three locations across the separate platform forums, and important topics being missed by console players. That’s the biggest issue, players are all over the place. This is the TSW forum and how it has been for ages and why the platforms do not need separation when talking about general things to do with the game, or general things about the routes they represent, or how DTG do things, a growing list of general topics. Any thread that is platform specific can still be of use to other players or ignored. Console players are not to be feared and neither are their opinions or insights. Anyone saying that the merge will cause confusion is wrong. The forum is already confusing. Where do I post a thread about UK signalling as depicted in the game? Currently a confusing choice awaits me and I can’t post the same topic in three places to cover all players, so let’s get rid of that confusion and let’s not all be afraid of each other, or having to skip a few topics now and then.
This is happening everywhere. However, if you have good moderators, they would be the ones who can move threads into the appropriate forums, channeling the discussion to the right audience.
I'm with Stujoy here. Although I am curious about yardem's response (and those who disagree with me and say we should keep the platforms separated), and pose to everyone: Where would you move all the topics that Stujoy listed? I personally would move them to a general discussion sub-forum (obviously not named 'general discussion' but something else like... like... ok I can't think of anything. I can understand why some would want separation from the TSC forum, but I can't see how that could be implemented) Back on topic: move them to a general discussion subforum and remove the platform specific subforums. It has been proved in the "technical reports" section that prefixes work in separating platforms, but only if they are limited, (I would say maximum of two short prefixes per thread - phone screens aren't that big!).
I do believe a reformat is long overdue. For instance, when a route is new, I sometimes find relevant threads about it in DTL Articles, and PC, and PS, and/or Xbox. My main change would be to create a separate subforum for each new DLC, on announcement, with the first post being the related article. Subsequent articles could be tacked right there. It could also potentially be locked after a certain period of time, presumably once all the bugs, discrepancies, and inaccuracies have been dutifully logged by the players. Otherwise, I support ridding ourselves of the PC/PS/Xbox subforums and moving it all to General Discussion. I would keep Technical Reports, with platform tabs, and also Suggestions, if only to keep everybody's (including my own) suggestions from flooding all the other subforums. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Merging forums will only introduce more frustration for the consumer. If you want the forums to be clear and easily accessible you need to keep the separate rooms for PC, XBox, PS even more like the Steam Deck and others. Back when I used to be involved in forums it was easier for the moderators to have too many rooms than not enough. You also need decent moderators who are capable of moving posts from one section to another. Having separate rooms also helps keeps the forums need and tidy and away from confusion imo. Unless of course DTG want the forums with little to no moderators.
My feeling is that some of the long standing PC members tend to have an air of self-importantce with their comments - not in a nasty way but more in a 'when I want your opinion I will beat it into you' kind of manner and because of which I personally don't want critical XBox issues to be generalised into a free for all environment. They, like PS5 issues, are perfectly fine where they are...out of the way in their own little world The other problem is that if all comments are dumped into the same pot then (purely because the volume of XBox and PS posts are a bit lightweight when compared to the current PC section) those important posts that currently remain in full view for all to see are just going to vanish into that ocean of PC threads...probably never to be seen again. Let's just merge the console stuff together and keep it separate from the PC section. After all, we are playing different versions of the same game.
Agreed, I'd just make them subforums of a general discussion section for topics that aren't platform specific. I'd also add PC, Xbox, and PS subforums for gameplay suggestions since gameplay suggestions can often be platform dependent. Ideally, I'd have: General Discussion -> PC Discussion, Xbox Discussion, PS Discussion Suggestions -> General Gameplay Suggestions -> PC Suggestions, Xbox Suggestions, PS Suggestions Suggestions -> Route Suggestions -> Locomotive Suggestions Technical Reports -> General Technical Reports, PC Technical Reports, Xbox Technical Reports, PS Technical Reports
You’ve totally missed the point. The idea is to have it less confusing and less cumbersome. Gameplay is the same across platforms except some service layers aren’t present on the outgoing gen 8 consoles, suggestions don’t need separating for platforms at all, and they actually used to be separated by loco, route, other, and it didn’t work very well. The fewer places players have to post their threads, the less chance they have to post in the wrong section, and the more people get to see every thread they are likely to want to interact with. There really isn’t much difference between platforms and I read all the subforums and see all the repetition there is. It has needed streamlining for a very long time, and it certainly doesn’t need an extra eleven, yes eleven (11) new subforums (highlighted in the quoted post) like you suggest here.
Agreed, subforums would make it harder to find discussions. Community certainly isn't big enough to need extra subforums.
' I agree that gameplay suggestions do tend to be hard to find amongst the huge number of route/loco suggestions. Perhaps once the new cross-platform forum is available, that new forum would be a more fitting place to discuss gameplay suggestions. I'm not a fan of creating sub-forums. Tags might be a better thing, but I'm not too fond of those either.
I'd actually like more separation there, with filters added to the "new posts" page to be able to filter the posts to purely those within the TSW forum, rather than all the TSC and Catan ones.
A reasonable breakdown might look like: One TSW2 category One TSW3 category One Technical category (with posts tagged by platform/game) One Suggestions category (no reason to have separate forums for things not even in the game) One Announcements category (locked to DTG staff posting new threads, with players able to comment and discuss articles only) One Creation Centre category One Off Topic category Easy enough to prune the existing categories by 1/3
In the interests of everyone's preferences, the mascot should be optional in settings (in the off-chance someone doesn't want a forum mascot or has disdain for the name Gertrude.)
Merging rooms all into one or fewer rooms will cause more confusion and frustrating. If Rooms are labelled clear and has decent moderation it works well. Why would you want to merge all the consoles and PC? Seems a bit lame to me. I don't see the problem in posting in a PC section for PC playes and Xbox for Xbox players and PS for PS players, that seems to me the bare minimum. They could have a 'General Discussion' for mixed things if wanted. It sounds like DTG want everything in one place and have a bare minimum of moderators but for us consumers the forums will not be improved, quite the opposite.
I very much disagree. What needs to be segregated is platform-specific, usually technical topics. Gameplay concerns are almost never a matter for a single platform; I can't stand having to look through three forums to find an answer about PZB braking times or the accuracy of Reigate station. What is a mess is having all the technical complaints jumbled into one multi-platform forum. I propose Gameplay Discussion Playstation Technical Issues XBox Technical Issues PC Technical Issues
If you look at the top dozen or so current threads in the Playstation general discussions then you could argue that the bulk of them are VERY console specific as well as some being key conversations. 'as is' they are all easily viewable - but if they were to be dumped into an all formats general discusion section then, considering the volume of PC posts alone, there's a very high likelihood they could just vanish into complete obscurity....and out of sight usuallly means out of mind where TSW is concerned. For as long as we are playing two different versions of the same game (consoles don't have modding capabilities, the ability to tailor graphics settings and where gen8 is concerned there are reduced layers) those platform specific discussions sections have to remain as they currently are. Besides, you can easily search "PZB" to find your query. If those general discussion sections were to merge then if I was returning to the forums after, say, a 3 month absence my only option would be to trawl thru page upon page of random conversations to try and fathom out what is specific to my platform.
Couldn't you just filter by topics that have a PlayStation prefix? I am quite certain that is the plan. Also I just thought of something: I feel like we should introduce the ability for the forums to handle more than one language. At least German for a start. I know they don't have live translation resources at the moment, this should be implemented sooner, rather than later.
The need for other key languages is probably understood by dtg. I think the issue may be in such a forum’s moderation by language savvy staff.
DTG have been advertising a German speaking community manager post. That doesn’t necessarily mean a German language forum is coming. If it did, that is definitely a forum that should be separate from the English speaking forum, like Rivet have. It will encourage more German speakers to the forum but may lead to a disappearance of some members from posting in the English language forum. German speaking countries are definitely a big market and a large number of players.
And VERY technical. Under my scheme they would have their own forum; DLC cap issues wouldn't belong in gameplay discussions..
your agreeing with my post but you say you disagree with it in a strange way. I said each platform should have their own platform with maybe a 'General Discussion' forum and you 'very much disagree'. I assume it was my post but if you were disagreeing with the OP then fair enough and I apologise.
While I do generally like the proposed changes to the forum structure, I do not see alot of improvement happening, without the forum moderation getting a lot stricter, which I would really like to see happening. Even currently about 50% of the topics are posted in the wrong section without any moderation happening. Bugs get basically spammed everywhere, despite bug report section and topics get derailed quickly. So my suggestion in addition to the restructuring is to always move topics to the right place and issue warnings for those posting in the wrong section.
Only reason German speaking countries are a big market is because DTG has been releasing German content for over a decade. If they'd been releasing content from any other country, that country would've been a big market as well.
Although, it could be argued that the fact that there are fewer forum sections means there is a greater chance of the post being posted in the correct place in the first place.
No, as usually there is no problem of people not knowing what platform they are on. Just a few examples of grossly wrong positioned threads: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...e-dublin-connolly-belfast-lanyon-place.63171/ https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/bahnstrecke-bremen-oldenburg-bug-list.62282/ https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/class-66-livery-a-work-in-progress-advice-needed.63160/ And they are not new, however have not been moved to where they belong.
People not being able to read, or not willing to put any effort in it, is nothing new. You're not gonna prevent that. Although having lots of (sub)forums would probably increase the problem. Moderation to move topics into the right forums could be a time consuming task, I guess you can help them by using the report function on any topic that's been posted in an inappropiate forum.
Yeah, it's basic statistics, the more subforums you have, the more posts will end up in the wrong one. And I imagine it's easier for moderators to correctly flag a mislabelled post while reading a single subforum than go over several of them moving everything to the correct one.
It is not simple statistics. There is no linear correlation between the number of subforums and misposted topics. Again, there is hardly a case where a Playstation specific topic gets posted in the PC forum, so it is not a simple innocent mistake stuff gets posted in the wrong subforum, but rather the lack of thought people give when deciding on where to post. If some of those offenders would just take 30 seconds and think about where a topic might belong and why the subforums exist how they do, this would not happen. And this is where moderation needs to kick in. Without it, the new structure will be as messy at it is now and frankly, this forum is one of the worst I have yet to see in that regard. If it would not be the main source of information for TSW, I would probably avoid it. But yeah, maybe I should start reporting every offender, however I guess that will get annoying quickly.
I see a point of at least a not platorm related subforum, with tags perhaps seperating the topics where needed, but also with with general topics that are not platform specific. The suggestions forum also needs some cleanup to get the quality higher, and subsequently more interaction back there again. It's currently a shadow of what it was a few years ago, with some people even resorting to making suggestions that are written to not seem suggestions in the PC forums.
That's a fair comment but I think there is still a big difference over reporting a problem (in the technical section) and discussing said issue (in console/PC specific sections). Again, if for example that DLC cap thread was integrated into the technical section then it would very, very quickly disappear down that huge list of issues, but because of the infrequency of console posts there is an increased likelihood that until a resolution is in place it will remain in full view for all to see...a point which will in turn (a) offer immediate levels of information to newer members who may be unaware of the problem and (b) avoid the issue of multiple repeat posts. ....and more importantly (c) politely remind DTG that this - or any highlighted issue - is not going to go away. Out of sight is very much out of mind where Dovetail Games are concerned. We're kind of fortunate that, due to reduced levels of traffic in the console sections, any critical issue is as good as a sticky, so not only can you see it at a glance but you can also easily track the length of time it takes to resolve said problem.
can you guys do another usa route? i was hoping you guys can do a Sierra Railway map. they have the famous steam locomotives, the Sierra Railway #3, and the Sierra Railway #28. The route is really cool. it starts from Riverbank,California, to Sonora,California. can you add it to Train Sim World 3? send me a message and i can get the details
The us is getting a new passenger route. Either the nec or njt. But it's probably just going to be the nec. Create a suggestion on that in the forum page.
Indeed, there probably need to be stickied posts for each platform in the tech section listing currently known issues. That way it's easier to find keywords to search for threads about a specific one you are encountering.
Did someone make a sockpuppet just to make some kind of statement about people posting in obviously the wrong part of the forum?
it was cross-posted once as a profile post, and once in a thread about the proposed changes to the forum layout, by a completely new account. So most likely either it's someone making a point or it's one of those bots we've been seeing a lot lately that copy-paste text from other threads to try and make seemingly relevant posts prior to dropping the advertising in, and a forum search will show that.
