I've just signed up to report some bugs I've found in some DLC, and when I did a search I've found that these bugs were reported months ago by several people, with plenty of detail. What purpose does this forum serve other than as a space for people to vent? Do any of the bugs reported here get fixed?
Whilst I share your frustration, have you logged the bugs as support tickets? While the forums are looked at this is the best way for DTG to understand how many people are affected by each bug and thus how to priories fixing them. (Just don't be disheartened by the standard response of "This matches a bug already logged and we can't provide a timescale for a fix, follow our official community channels for updates, improvements and fixes!"). The biggest issue is not getting the bugs fixed but actually getting the fixes released. There is currently a bottleneck with testing due to capacity and ensuring the fixes don't introduce more bugs (I'm looking at you Red Signals!). Unfortunately patience is required then waiting for fixes but they do (usually) get fixed eventually.
Bugs do get fixed most of the time but the release cycle is a bit slow and has been for a while unfortunately. DTG have been talking about reducing the cycle time so there is some hope for the future if they pull that off. Putting the information here and as support tickets is the best bet. The game developers do read this forum. Paul
I have done that too, yes! It would be great if they could fix bugs before starting new projects, then they wouldn't have to spend ages switching between different projects and having release cycles for each one. I think my frustration is that because this game is a niche, there is no incentive for them to do otherwise. However I played Hmmsim Metro recently and even though it's in Korean, I found it to be leaps ahead of the lot of DTG content, so hopefully that means they now might have an incentive to improve their quality.
a place for DTG to share announcements, stream information and to interact generally with what is loosely called "train sim world community" (ie people who play or are interested in the game, outside of that the phrase is meaningless) A place for people in "the community" to talk, share problems, help each other out and muse on the game, the state of the game etc etc A place to report technical issues with the game, make suggestions, share mods, videos and screenshots etc. With regards to the first two there is NO guarantee that they will be acknowledged, addressed, fixed, if they are fixed that those fixes will be released... A place for people to vent - though often people go a bit far and end up in the column marked ("erm, maybe not")
A great way for them to reduce times is simply don't release the Content until QA have thoroughly gone through it and the major problems have been sorted, and not with their eyes closed as it seems to feel they do most times. The longer they keep releasing Content in it's current state, with how slow they are to fix 1 or 2 things here and there, then over time, it's gonna be a nightmare.
There are always commercial realities to software development. They're not passion projects, they are work keeping a team of nearly 200 people fed. Development and QA cannot go on forever - there are financial limits. This is the same with ALL software not just train simulators. I work in the software industry in my job and its a very unusual project that goes live with no bugs. Could it be better? Sure. Could it be worse? Yes lots. Are people trying pretty hard to get it right? Yes, definitely. Paul
There are bugs, sure that's technology for you and nothing can be perfect, but when there are actual features that don't work is another matter entirely, especially when the same issues from past content keeps being released. However, even with Bugs, you will find a majority [of Dev's I like supporting anyway], will actively work with the Community to help rectify issues immediately, rather than months and sometimes years later. Matt said himself in a Stream for the West Cornwall Local, one reason it was pulled out and released later was due to an actual Feature not functioning as intended, and he believes this is the attitude they need to start taking. Yet the next release after had a similar issue, and was still released on time without a fix [and there still hasn't been one].
I'm sure all devs would love to help indefinitely, but there are the commercial realities that they will be moved onto the next project. In any software project there is usually a backlog or "mop up" crew who will work their way through outstanding issues. It can take some time for those fixes to appear though - especially in this case where console release slots have to be negotiated with other parties (Sony and Microsoft) and booked months in advance. Paul
I can’t think how to put this diplomatically as it’d too early on a Sunday but ….. Stopping the release of dlc to tidy up what are considered non game breaking bugs will result in the game studio potentially failing and losing momentum. For the old hats on the forum whilst there are some significant bumps in the road ,where they have been able (not all), they’ve moved some bug fixes through quickly.
This is very true chieflongshin game companies only have one thing to keep food on the table, continued sales and the only real way that happens is continuing new content.
