What Id Do For Dtg And Other Developers To Go And Fix Their Products....

Whether it's a topic brought up in the past I apologise.

But, given the sheer level of DLCs that now seem to be riddled with bugs or scenery issues or wrong sounds for locos etc etc...

I honestly wouldn't mind at all, if we didn't get any DLCs whether it be routes, locos or gameplay packs for the new few months or whatever would be a realistic timeline. ...
And instead DTG, Skyhook, Rivet etc. (any other DLC makers), went away and fixed bugs, sound issues, and scenery issues to bring their content to a state where it's playable, enjoyable.

I only bring this up as I've recently wasted (it seems), money on a loco add on dlc in which I found the loco to be in an appalling state of play. Missing sounds... Insanely loud engine audio... Clunky physics...

It just be nice instead of DTG pumping out DLCS as if they're going out business, they actually went off and focused on FIXING some of the many many many issues with their now relatively large amount of DLC for TSW5, recent and TSW5 Compatible routes.

Again, apologies if the subject has been brought up before....just simply wanted to voice my opinion.

 

Many of us feel that way, but just stand by for the avalanche of comments from the acolytes who believe DTG exist financially from day to day and halting DLC to focus on core updates will bankrupt the company. Or the other excuse, which is those working on content aren’t those who are qualified to mend the core. Well with UK routes notably Cardiff and WCMLS seemingly outsourced to Rivet and not much sign of any work on the core, I do begin to wonder other than marketing staff there are many personnel left at DTG.

 

Ohhh I'm bracing it.

For a while the same argument (not from me, but was a contributor to the matter), was presented by some people on Frontier Developments stance on Elite Dangerous. E.g. instead of content updates. Have a HUGE update dedicated to bug fixes and the like...

I've played TSW since it's first iteration TSW2020 and found TSW3 to be the best in my opinion whereas now it's just getting more and more expensive per game and DLC regardless of a loco, gameplay packs etc, where the pricing of said DLC just isn't worth what you get.

And said DLCs like routes are just riddled with poor copy paste scenery, bugs bugs and more bugs.. etc etc...

 

I remember when we were told that they'd be taking a hiatus to fix bugs and core issues. What did we get instead after a few months, TSW 3

 

Vern, even if DTG don't have the skill set in house to untangle the core. Surly there must be companies out there with the skills, who can be contracted to do some work.

 

Something else that is a little annoying, you'll get a question pop up on a preview or roadmap, regarding a third party product.

Someone will ask something like "When is X issue going to be resolved" the answer will be along the lines of, it's their product, nothing to do with us Guv.

Well, it should be something to do with Dtg, it's being developed for their game!

 

My thoughts exactly. They need to bring in UE4 specialists who can get to the bottom of the stuttering and sound squelching, work out how to add more save slots and fix the residual unreliability of the save game (service chaining, can’t cope with complex scripted items), amongst many other things. Oh and sort out the awful lighting with more users options to fine tune it.

 

Exactly! DTG retain sole publishing rights for content and no doubt creaming a nice little commission off each unit sold. That comes with a certain amount of responsibility and now the EP and other senior product managers rarely if ever pop up on the forums, the Roadmap or Product Q&A’s are the only place we can reasonably be sure our concerns are read and hopefully noted. Between my PC and PS5 versions I have a significant four figure ££££ sum invested in this game and I think DTG owe us some transparency in return.

 

Full agree. But I think also part of the problem is, they know that once they dangle the next route carrot out there, all attention moves to this. Although having said that, it does seem many of us are no longer falling for it. Certainly for day one.

 

I'm definitely no DTG loyalist, I just look at it as what we have is definitely not perfect and never will be, but at the same time it's a dam sight better than not having it at all. I do feel that the overly angry bunch can't seem to grasp that concept at times, perfection has never existed does not exist and never will exist.........

 

With the recent flood of releases, they haven’t actually got that much imminent certainly for the UK not even a named next route. I can’t see me buying the Railtour reskin pack which leaves just the Class 104 (ha) and the JT Class 86 plus stock pack (huzzah) on the roadmap. Nothing named for a US route and the one German S-Bahn.

So unless there are some big reveals in the forthcoming roadmap, a dry period seems to be ahead. Well there is a new Season Pass for Snowrunner coming out next month, though in truth I still have loads of Regions barely touched and Austria is currently inducing keyboard rage when I play it.

 

Manchester Airport Commuter is still on the roadmap, albeit delayed and developed by ATS.

 

Sometimes you do a bloody good job at pretending to be one then mate!

 

I swear this is like a third thread with this subject TODAY ... y guys know that there is Enough is enough thread, right?

 

As a software developer myself, I understand that a piece of software is not going to be perfect; there's going to be a certain amount of bugs and "technical debt" in the code base. However, in TSW it seems that the constant rush to release DLC has led to this snowballing. I think it's now at the point where DTG need to take a step back and look at how to manage this. If this means ceasing the production of DLC then so be it, but how many DLC are DTG actually producing now? Most seem to have some third party involvement. I was hoping that greater third party involvement would give DTG time to fix these issues, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
I don't work in game development but some projects I've worked on actually give developers a certain percentage of their time to fixing bugs and technical debt instead of building new features.

 

They are all working on TSW 7 by now.

 

Not "instead"; there were nearly a dozen patches released during that hiatus period, and TSW 3 had already been in the works much earlier as well (since the end of the previous year, Sam said IIRC).

 

I think one of the issues with TSW is that, unlike most games, or general software packages, almost every new DLC will have changes within the UE engine interface which must be tested for backward compatibility with all existing DLCs. This demands resources and I believe that, since the abandonment of Adam's team, those resources are not available. Pausing DLC development would be financially damaging and will not happen - but given the company is profitable, the idea of a dedicated team to work on core issues and bugs should be given consideration - clone Adam! Bear in mind, however, that any patch could not be integrated without passing through the hands of the regular development crew so it doesn't interfere with dev versions of new DLC.
What about a stream (or streams) from Matt and his team in which a list has been developed of all outstanding bugs (yeah I know even that will bring a sh..storm of abuse) and in which the team addresses (explains) each bug and honestly states if it will/can be fixed. I think I am a (reasonably) reasonable person and I could live with that.
The perennial complaint of stuttering and sound squelching is unlikely to be fixed, since that is a 'feature' of the UE engine with which all games on that platform struggle to some extent or another. My guess is the sound interface between UE and TSW is much more complex and demands more resources than most games.

 

DTG fixes have nasty unfortunate side effects.For however long and impressive there list of fixes are you'll get a equally long list of new broken items that weren't already broken.You have to pay the price one way or the other to get what you want.

 

If I had a nickel for every thread about DTG’s incompetence…

 

well, the game sure has its nice share of bugs, but the way some of these threads are written, blows it way out of proportion... if I hadnt been playing the game since early Covid (2020ish?), owning not all, but majority of DLCs and playing em all regularly (with singular exception being Luzern Sursee because of broken ETCS), I would think this game is an unplayable pile of you-know-what that would fry my computer and murder my family

there are things that annoy me as well, and I regularly post about em in specific threads (like the broken brakes on BR 112, AFB/LZB bug on ICE-T and such), but it is rarely a deal-breaker for me... and the game continues to be a sanity-saver for me, especially coming to my place after a long and stressful day at work (to a beeping inferno in a virtual cab lol)

I dont judge, I dont spin sometimes nearly conspiracy level theories about what is DTG evil goal or sth... because many of these assumptions are just that, assumptions, like when ppl casually say/write that this or that journalist wrote a certain article because some shadowy forces pay them

and yes, they often take their sweet time fixing things... like BR 442, Koln Aachen, services out of Aachen would spawn the second unit without a pantograph, rendering those services unplayable (unless you worked around it by spawning on foot)... aaand they fixed it... took em "only" like 2-3 yrs ... but it got fixed ... not saying thats normal or ok, but then, it was an exception

they are not gods, so I can imagine they have to divide their resources and try to be effective by not focusing on everything at once, so yea, some stuff falls through the cracks... and we, the community, keep reminding them, which is good... just, lets not make em some kind of evil cabal thats just out there trying to screw us deliberately

 

dtg is still producing a bunch of content. There were many released in the past couple of months

 

DTG has one thing that keeping them going on console at least no competition in the train sim market.There are random silly little train puzzle games and a few simulator games with trains but there in a category by themselves.So cranking out sub par products is easy to get away with.You want a train simulator it's DTG or nothing...

 

Nothing has been blown way out of proportion.
In the past year alone there have been almost 3,100 threads (many also containing multiple follow-on conversations) started in "troubleshooting and issues" as well as countless hundreds of issues reported in the "feedback" section for routes released during that period....figures that I wouldn't say are particularly healthy in a game that's supposedly improving with each released version!

 

To be quite honest I've lost all faith in DTGs abilities they seem to selectively bury their head in the sand until it suits them, and I don't see that improving anytime soon... The UK content seems to be outsourced to developers with questionable quality no matter how strong the negative feedback is, the game itself is plagued with core issues that show absolutely no sign of being improved outside of some minor optimisations updates...

Quite frankly I have very little time or faith in the direction in which the game is clearly heading, and the feedback surrounding the quality of DTGs UK content seems to be intentionally being ignored, if it wasn't for the likes of third parties like Just Trains, Skyhook and DTGs Liam/Other backround teams route remasters (who do these as personal projects outside of their official roles, and that DTG should be extremely grateful too for retaining the hardcore fans by a thread)... I could quite happily bin the entire game in its current state.


I'm beyond frustrated and irritated by the ongoing core issues, the poor quality of UK content being churned out... False promises... Insincere hype... I think that just about covers it.

 

The direction the game is taking is, in my opinion, regrettable. And with this thought I am acting accordingly: since the release of TSW 5 I have only bought Mittenwaldbahn, because I love TSG for the care and quality with which they build their creations. It is, to this day, everything I would like DTG to be, but unfortunately it is the opposite.

I still can't finish a service in Frankfurt with the flixtrain without the game crashing. We were told in November that they were working on fixing it but that there would be no progress until the new year. Well here we are in April and I have no hope anymore. Not even something as basic as fixing the unusable touchscreen problem on consoles has been fixed.

I'm tired of this attitude, I think some of us customers who have spent so much money in the past buying everything on launch day are becoming less and less invested in the game, but they don't seem to care too much.

 

+1 to the two posts above. It’s only the fact I have invested so much money in the franchise plus the odd gem like WCMLOS, Mittenwald and the Dutch route (though the latter has already started to get repetitive) that keeps it installed. Even those are marred by core issues such as sound squelching, about which DTG seem to put the corporate towel over the heads, don’t read the forums etc.

I sincerely hope this week’s Roadmap will include some contrition and a bit more information about core fixes, if they even have anybody on staff qualified to work with the core. However, I suspect nothing much will change. More marketing waffle, swooning over how well Thomas is selling (maybe) and dodging all the tough questions in the Q&A/chat.

 

I wonder if there's any long term plans to rebuild TSW from scratch with UE5 or they will just continue as is for several years to come. Full rebulids come with danger though, as anyone who plays Football Manager will know recently!

 

The longer they leave it and the more content they churn out, the harder it becomes to breakaway. Unless they manage to recruit some real UE expert(s) who can devise an in house converter to gear up all the existing content. However, as they can’t even seem to manage the basics such as solving stuttering/squelching and more than one save slot, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

 

Not going to happen. There are way too many DLCs released, each one of them with its own problems.

If they ever switch to UE5, it will need to be a new game.

Keep in mind this is difficult to do. Making a new game using UE5 could solve a lot of the stuttering, but it wouldnt be much different in the graphics department (you would need more man hours spent in each DLC to change that, not just a core change).

Bet many people wouldnt be happy to abandon old content if you do not get better eye candy in return.

 

Unfortunately, there is no expert that can fix this. There have been so many bad design decissions made at the beginnings that were not corrected when they should that it is impossible to do it now at once. At least not in a way that makes any economic sense.

 

I'm really kinda shocked at this point that after this long DTG haven't decided to redo there frist NEW YORK route.They clearly love to recycle eveything at this point and what a easy job it would be seeing all the assets needed to do this are already planned stored details etc out.Not saying it wouldn't still be a job,but they don't have to start from square one on this route.

 

They pretty much have done it, don’t see the point in them wasting the time to redo a route which offers less than the existing remake, especially if they could have spent their time on other Amtrak routes.

 

TSW was the rebuild in 2017. Unfortunately dlc quantity was choosen over a solid core foundation.

Passenger system broken, substitution weired since tsw4, class 66 version 1-12 of the same loco type. Promises about Steam manual firing has been forgotten.

The quality inconsistence is a hard one, and made me basicly stop buying dlcs. Sell the teleport cone of cutted unterpasses as "feature" is really beyond worth my time.
While the new dutch route seems to be very good, nobody knows if the next dlc will be full of cuts and excuses again.

To prevent annoyance, my personal feature "the No Buy button" is working very well.

 

With the revelation in another thread that the EP stated on a stream when asked about Cardiff Central, " we don't model station frontages because of the work it entails " I'm beginning to think the Dutch route will be the last money I spend on TSW for quite some time. More than ever epitomises the blasé and lazy mindset that now seems to be prevalent at DTG, accompanied by a lack of vision just keep pumping out the content and the willing mugs will part with £30 plus we can rely on the acolytes to put down any criticism on the forums or other social media.

 

not yet, they are still finishing tsw6 with more innovative bugs and new broken (and not so innovative) features
once tsw6 is released in september, then they will start production of tsw7 to be released in september 2026

 

all that matters and interests dtg is money, that's all it is about, profit and money
fixing bugs doesn't make a profit, doesn't make money, doesn't give a financial return, so they just push things along and make new promises that they will never keep
and all of this got worse after dtg was bought by focus entertainment, in other words, what was already bad got even worse

 

I personally won't mind the NYC garbage train container car returning,that service seem appropriate considering the quality of many of the current and past dlc's.

 

But you would think that common sense says if you spend time fixing bugs more people would play the game, more people would buy the DLC’s, and less chance of licenses being cancelled. if things carry on, I can see even more licenses being removed from train companies

 

Please don't ever set up a software house and make games
. You won't get past the title screen.

There's no money in fixing bugs. Imagine they fixed every single bug and never released recent dlcs.

Those recent dlcs have likely paid for the next few route suggestions

 

And then there is the increasingly poor communication with the community. I've been reading the forum for several years and it has never been as bad as it is now. I miss those times with Sam, everything was much more transparent. I even remember the criticisms of the first SEHS release, and how they seemed to listen to them and take them seriously to improve. There was a better symbiosis between the two parties but that has been lost. The latest has already been the Thomas thing, which seems to have dynamited everything, where the company seems to have been outraged by the community's reaction.



Well I would tell them to take note, if we disagree with so many things they are doing lately there is a reason, and remember this is a niche game and we are the ones who spend a lot of money on their game. If you take paths that go against the popular sentiment of the people who have been supporting you for so many years, I predict a bleak future for you.

 

Wrong. A quarter of the company i worked for including myself was laid off because they didnt listen to customers about fixing their products. The customers left the business and so a load of us lost our jobs. The company chased the next big thing, ai and marketing. Its now facing liquidation.

 

We are half way through the life of this version and the blurry textures are no closer to being fixed.

So yes the game is broken for sure. For the first time in years I've skipped buying routes.

But it has nothing to do with the EP not being on the forums. Sure it was fine when he was a senior producer but you don't see other EP's on other forums like MSFS.

Its the job of the community managers to pass that info on to him.

Besides if you look historically at the game bug fixes were no better or worse when he was active on the forums. So I don't see a link there.

It's just the same old par for the course as usual.

I just hope half the bugs get fixed for the new version coming out in about 6 months.

 

yes, I think so too but my thinking doesn't change anything, dtg doesn't think so that's why the situation of tsw core (and most of the dlcs) is as it is

 

On the first point, well he has in the past and if you are a senior manager running a product, then gathering customer feedback (reading the forums), good, bad and even downright rude is part of the territory. A business can't exist in a rose tinted bubble.

On the second point, well if the EP can't be expected to be hands on, then the CM's should be doing more than just issuing carefully choreographed and approved announcements. They should be reading the room and feeding the mood back up the chain, then coming back with sincere reassurances, not just platitudes and management bull speak. But they are rarely seen - just look at the number of active threads currently expressing dissatisfaction, whether on going core issues, pricing policy, lack of vision when it comes to DLC, using cosplay developers - almost as if the mindset at the company is, put a towel over our heads, ignore it and, "What problems?"

 

Isn't there a thread now live with fixes for.some things which potentially negates another "enough is enough" thread a little.

Conversely I'm a believer New content pays wages; patches don’t. The industry shows that buggy games can still be financially successful if the content is engaging with the majority of players tolerating bugs if the experience is compelling enough—but they won’t tolerate a lack of content.

I'm relatively confident no one wants a game with bugs, but I'm more confident many wouldn't want there to have been a game 5 years ago and still be rattling around waiting for a perfect representation of a rapid transit route.

If its a game breaker absolutely (you cannot open game and play it) but there will always be quality of life stuff in any game that needs either teasing out or accepting.

 

The thing is, Adam's Preservation Team was not a Bug Fixit team. They were formed originally to migrate DLC from UE 4.19 to 4.23, i.e. TSW 2020 to TSW 2, and then were kept in business updating older DLC to include newer features like PIS. When they had a route on the operating tab le they would fix those bugs they found, but it was never their primary mission

 

I don't think going to TSW6 in the same way we've had recently is the way forward for DTG. Honestly they've made a mess of it every time with dlc etc.

Especially not when the core has all these issues which are really spoiling the game. I understand the forums are seemingly the minority but this is where the dedicated customers/fans who are invested in the game are so surely someone has to take note of what we're saying. Maybe these are the reasons that Sam decided to part ways with DTG distancing itself from the community and accountability for the messes that have been made.

Either way I really hope they turn it around. I love the game and the people behind it seem like really great people. Like we all do, I want this game to succeed otherwise we wouldn't be on here. It's just a shame that it's getting so inconsistent in terms of quality. And then the high quality is overshadowed by the bugs and core issues.

Some of these core issues have existed since the upgrade to TSW 3, the Z fighting issues, sound issues and it seems a little like they're getting worse with each release. I don't remember having half these issues on TSW2

 

I'm pretty sure he is aware of the problems but what is he going to do. How do you know if he not reading the forums, its not like you can see whos read what.

Tell you he is aware and they are fixing them? How is that going to help. They say it every roadmap.

Do you remeber the one where JD and Nat said they were tired of reading nothing but complaints on the forum. And Matt promised there would be less bugs going forward. That turned out false.

Matt is not a coder so its not like he can personally fix anything.

And in the past when he acknowledged the bugs we still didn't get any fixes faster then we do now.

So I still don't see that them personally addressing the situation is going to make any difference. They have already done that twice but again same old same old.

And in all honestly do they even have any credibility with you still. They don't to me, so even if Matt or CM's were replying on forums I wouldn't believe what they say.

They only way to fix it at this point is to put out or shut up from them.

That is why I was hoping the silence would be benificial because maybe they realize the same. But this is DTG so I highly doubt it.

 

It seems like DTG is falling into the "platform decay" trap that many companies fall into after initially delivering a good product. Seems like they are just rushing out new content and then leaving it to rot with little to no future patches or support. Third parties like Just Trains and TSG are the ones making the highest quality content nowadays while DTG and Rivet are just content mills. Hopefully some of these new independent devs popping up can be like TSG and Just Trains in putting out quality over quantity.

In my opinion, TSW's peak was 2021-2022 with the Rush Hour routes and then TSW3. That was the last time DTG actually seemed to care about putting out quality content worth purchasing at full price and supporting them with future patches and updates. Since then, prices for routes have gone from $29.99 (USD) to now $44.99! Even with inflation, that does not account for the increase. Meanwhile, we’re getting less new trains per route, more reused content per route, and a lower quality product on release overall.