PC Will We Ever Get The Promised Fixes?

I'm not expecting old stuff to be 'infinitely supported', quite the contrary. I think I have a pretty good handle on Capitalism and commercial realism, possibly better than some. However, I do expect that promises given that the broken stuff (caused by game developers and acknowledged as such), once made, will be kept. I do not believe this is such a big ask.

 

HEAR! HEAR! Well said Sir.

 

Another month rolls over and still no promised TSW2 patches in sight. How many times have we heard "we have to wait for a release window"? Didn't seem so difficult to find a release window for the 3 patches in a week for the Bremen route or the multiple ones for the recently released Rivet route. And thus, those of us who stuck with the better version of the game simply play the waiting game...

 

Love your avatar!! "Play the waiting game"...indeed. DTG = Down Time Games

 

I had to remove it. It was apparently making some children cry.

 

Well, to my way of thinking, that shows very poor form..

 

Another month, another roadmap, another "please stand by"...

 

I have commented to Jamie on the roadmap thread as well.

 

I think it’s time for people to just accept the writing on the wall about TSW2 and pay the nominal fee to upgrade to TSW3. Sucks but it’s pretty clear that game is dead in the water and quite honestly supporting it when basically the same game but improved and with newer content exists is a waste of dev time.

 

I would agree with you, however TSW3 is in some ways a step backwards. Reading these forums with the Xbox audio issue coming back up and somehow Spirit of Steam running worse on this new version tells me to stay away from it. Not to mention any of the new content running poorly from my experience with it. So basically all I have is TSW2 until either TSW3 goes through some major overhaul or things are improved for TSW4. In the meantime it would be nice to get the previously promised TSW2 fixes.

 

I can’t speak for spirit of steam since I don’t play it but the Xbox audio issue is basically fixed. I own it on both platforms (XSX and PS5) and the only issue I noticed with the sound is the AWS alarms on UK trains sound a bit compressed compared to PS5. It’s not terrible though and definitely doesn’t outweigh the improvements of TSW3.

Even if these fixes/pres updates do come out for TSW2, which they probably will at some point since they were promised, I think that will basically be the last hurrah for 2 and it will fade away like TSW1. All new content will need 3 anyway.

 

Ok so at least the issue isn't the Xbox jackhammering coming back. That was awful for years. And yes these last fixes would be the last for TSW2 and that's fine. I have enough content on there to occupy myself until something better comes along.

 

I tend to agree with you that TSW seems to be on a downward trajectory in terms of a user base (from usage charts I've seen). And with new competition coming into the space, who knows what the future holds. For me, I'll stick to my holding pattern on TSW3 until I deem it acceptable to my eye. If that never happens, then at least I can say I didn't sink a lot more money into the pit.

 

I agree about it being a waste of dev time, but charging for the TSW3 update (sans new routes) was a business decision of their own making.

By saying "just pay the nominal fee", you're essential saying that the May release of Spirit of Steam is no longer supported 4 months later.

If that's the business they want to run, fine, but i can spend my money only once and let's just say I have other hobbies as well.

 

I have said elsewhere on here, I do not expect this version to be supported ad infitum, all I'm asking is that what they (DTG) broke, they (DTG), fix as they promised. So please get off your high horse and understand that is all we are asking for.

 

Yeah, especially since these fixes were originally promised for TSW2, even before TSW3 was announced.

 

There just aren't any release windows! Meanwhile Bremen, 3 patches released in a week.

 

LOL the old how long is a ball of string conundrum.

 

I’m still not handing over any more coin to DTG while they continue to release buggy content and then promise to fix it but never do. I have plenty of cash to buy whatever I like, but I stated many months ago that I won’t line their pockets further while they bulls**t their customers.

So I keep it in the bank. Except for the money I spent yesterday on Hogwarts Legacy, which as so far played works exactly as expected. No crashes, no glitches and no derailments!

 

"No crashes, no glitches and no derailments!" Dang!! What is wrong with those developers? They'll give the industry a bad name.

 

We all know the simple honest answer is no never. welcome to DTG DLC

 

Two upcoming fixes for the latest TSW3 route, yet still waiting for a "release window" for TSW2 fixes. Nothing more needs to be said about DTG and "promises".

 

So, your solution to DTG and their broken promises is the same as DTG's? They broke our game; we have no desire to move onto the new thing; yet if you buy the new thing, well lo and behold all your troubles will be over! What a crock! As anyone who even casually glances at the forums will attest, even the 'fixes' they provide for TSW2 DLC in TSW3, still needs more fixes. To further use your analogy of a fairy tale, it seems to me that DTG and all its blind adherents to the propaganda we see written, spoken and spruiked, could well be the villains in the tale.
I will say this one more time for you: they broke our version of the game, they promised to fix said game, we have no desire to fork out extra brass for 'pretties' like sparks and snow flurries, which is pretty much all one gets extra in the big new thing apart from of course, all the new bugs, which I see are still being worked on.

 

Allow me please to quote your original post: 'Unless you pay up and then move on to TRAIN SIM WORLD 3' and, 'Think of it this way......
Dovetail Games Train Sim World 2 Is the same as nearly ever fairytale'. I'm sorry, but that sounds like do nothing to me.

 

"May not make anything better".......................yes, unfortunately, this company has the form for this sort of lacklustre performance; can't argue with that!

 

And that's another monthly roadmap down with neither updates for TSW2 or an announcement of their cancellation.

 

I am betting that at this point they are just waiting for people to give up and forget about it, then they can drop it, just like they have dropped Livery Designer v2 and Scenario Planner v2. I mean "awaiting a suitable release build"? They have been saying that for a year now, if not more.

 

Scenario Planner and Livery Designer 2.0 were probably a marketing scheme to draw ppl to the game that's it...lol It never was going to happen, unless for some odd reason it's still in talks...When they made that goofy Scenario Planner wishlist, I knew there weren't gon be any improvements on that

 

If only... The problem is that TSW3 is much the same game but is NOT as good as TSW2 performance wise and that is an absolute deal breaker in any series where you expect the latest version to be an improvement. Even the die hard supporters accept there are "annoying stutters" in TSW3, problems which had mostly been ironed out on TSW2.

The word we are looking for here is UNACCEPTABLE.

BTW: Are you the same "pveezy" who did an LNER route on the old BVE4 freeware rail sim?

 

Like I've mentioned elsewhere, they've done a great job alienating a large portion of their customer base. Those that decided to stick with the better performing game are continuously left to the wayside as we are no longer driving sales. Not our choice as DTG left us in the dust. But the cash must flow, so mediocre TSW3 release after release must take priority. I've given up expecting these promised patches and even if they do come, I'm sure a few fixes will remain paywalled for old routes behind TSW3. I used to look forward to the new release streams, roadmaps, etc. But now they are just bland rinse repeat marketing gimmicks and back slapping showing off nice screenshots while omitting the glaring issue of a badly stuttering game (although granted it wouldn't make sense for sales to hype up deficiencies). At this point even if they ever get TSW3 fixed, they've left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm likely never to buy anything from DTG again. Quite sad as they were moving on the right track with TSW2, but decided to pivot and shove something nobody wanted out the door and 6 months later remains a colossal mess. Would be nice if 3rd party developers were allowed to keep TSW2 going, but the core game was removed from stores (at least on console) so that's never going to happen.

 

Fast becoming my sentiments as well. Not another penny from me.

 

Bullhockey. TSW2 stuttered right up to the end.

 

Not very much on any route. And the stuttering in TSW2 was oddly smoother than TSW3's kicking seat / seizure simulation along 50%+ of its routes. Despite the version being one number higher, it's a downgrade vs its predecessor.

 

Guys, accept it. These fixes for TSW2 are not, and never were, coming.

This ‘release window’ nonsense is just that, nonsense. A delaying / off-putting tactic & I don’t believe it for one second. If this was any other industry you would be able to get a refund but because it’s software you’re stuck with it. It stinks.

 

Well, I have to say I´m not surprised anymore. But hell, it takes some audacity to commit in written form on your own forum that you´d fix what you have broken in TSW2. And when called out on these promisses and getting tagged in order to have some answers, just doing the opossum. As if there was anymore proof needed that DTG gives a rat´s a$$ about their credibility, there we go.
Well, when your reputation is ruined anyway, you just continue with straight poker face and grab what you can. Niiiiice!
There used to be morals in this business, but thanks to enough die-hards they´ll get away with it. It´s just that soon these will have their own "TSW2 moment", just like others had before their enlightening "TSW2020 moment".

TSW3 is clearly a paywall. It should have been called TSW2.2, at best.

 

…and all the while Train Sim Classic goes from strength to strength.

 

It would be more sincere for DTG to communicate that there will be no more support for TSW2. Clearly there is only support for TSW3, and this ends up frustrating the expectations of its customers.

Why not end this "suffering" once and for all?

 

There are plenty of release windows, the excuse being proffered for the eternal delay- but new releases (= cash) plus patches for the new releases' ample bugs keep going to the head of the queue.

 

And since this fast paced monthly DLC routine will continue, I see no hope that the TSW2 patches will ever find a slot within the TSW3 catastrophe.

 

Let's look at some (unoffical) player numbers:

https://steamdb.info/app/530070/charts/ -> TSW2020
https://steamdb.info/app/1282590/charts/ ->TSW2
https://steamdb.info/app/1944790/charts/ -> TSW3

https://psnprofiles.com/search/games?q=Train Sim World

I think on Playstation is the most telling. Many more people purchased TSW2 but didn't upgrade to TSW3. I can't blame them because Train Sim World doesn't run very well on PS4 (doesn't matter what version). The DLC limits frustrated many and made them give up on the game, or lose faith in the developers. Removing DLC & delisting older games was probably not a wise move, as you will lose sales and confuse customers even more than leaving them up. On Playstation, I cannot see any DLC available for TSW2 except New Journeys. Not everyone is going to use the crappy internal store or know that buying the TSW3 version will work on TSW2 but you have to add it manually. And on Steam you cannot buy NEC, or the two loco addons that weren't upgraded to TSW2 so those are unavailable to buy now but thankfully you can still buy East Coastway for TSW2020. Even if NEC was a "base route" in TSW2020 it wasn't always the case, and had an addon originally. They could have taken the time to separate Sand Patch Grade and make it a DLC as well, so they could sell the loco addon for it.

Train Sim World 2 cost 24.99 at launch and came with 3 routes (2 new on PC), an upgraded Unreal version, wheel slip simulation, livery designer, scenario planner, improvements to older routes, and so forth. Train Sim World 3 is 39.99 with 3 (2 new) routes and comes with upgraded weather and lighting, but only for future routes and those they decide to go back to. It also added dynamic weather to all routes. Every year (even free updates) they update the UI so I won't include that, but I will admit that TSW3 is by far the best attempt yet.

As of now there really isn't a compelling reason to upgrade from 2 to 3 unless you want access to the new content. The additions of TSW3 are nice but feel more in line with what other developers would offer for free to customers. If this trend of a slowly decreasing active player base & version fragmentation continues I don't see a bright future for this product.

 

The whole release slot excuse makes no sense to begin with, as being separate games, they should be able to have completely separate release windows.

 

Release 'slots' only make sense for new releases not updates and improvements. I really don't mind that they spent more time and effort on their recent product. I understand what they are saying from a development standpoint it is hard to switch branches seamlessly. But I also remember Matt saying in a previous livestream that changes being made to TSW2 routes are being done in TSW2 and then ported to TSW3. If that was the case the work would largely be already done, and only building, testing and QA remain. They haven't been very straight forward with answers as to why it is frozen, I haven't heard a peep from Adam on stream since TSW3 launched. It looks to me like they have been focusing their special projects on TOD4 upgrades that aren't in the roadmap because they want it to be a "surprise" and if things don't work they can quietly cancel it. What the heck is the roadmap for then?

With Addon Manager development winding down, hopefully the people who have been assigned to that for a while (probably a year, on and off?) will be free to do more improvements to the core that we can all benefit from, like performance optimizations and new features.

 

But guyyys, have you heard about those 5 DLCs coming out this month? Don't worry about TSW2, give DTG more moneyyyy...

 

Shh! They have to keep up their ruse!

 

Marketing. If it were truly a proper roadmap there would be prioritizations and timelines. If you want to see what a good one looks like, see the Asobo weekly dev blog for MSFS on Thursdays (so here we already see an improvement weekly over monthly). Wishlist items from the community, what has recently been released, what is upcoming, and what is the timeline (even vague or not being considered) of items being worked on. And one may say "well Microsoft is a much bigger company". Yes, however Asobo is the developer and they're not much bigger than DTG in terms of people. I can understand not having a weekly update for this game, but a monthly update that hardly changes and is mostly used as promotional material for the next upcoming release is both a useless read when looking for game updates and not worth much more watching the stream. In the TSW2 days those live streams would see hundreds showing up. Now (at least on Twitch) they don't even bring in a hundred viewers. I'm actually curious if at the higher levels if by now they regret having done TSW3.

 

And besides the release window, they also ran out of build machines.

 

The work on the updates to TSW2 were largely done when TSW3 launched. They launched those updates with TSW3, in fact earlier than they announced. Hopefully Matt or better yet his boss can explain why these updates were shelved. He's said multiple times "they're in a queue" well so were the updates for TSW3 and your team had no problem getting those out on launch day 6 months ago. They also had time to make, queue and release updates to Sherman Hill and Boston during that time frame. Saying "they're in a queue" is a deflection from the real issue. WHY are they in a queue when other things have come out. Addon Manager I was patient with because I understood there were technical challenges there. I don't see that with these updates, I see a business decision and a bad one at that. Addon Manager was released for TSW2 about 3 weeks after TSW3 launched, and an update to that followed. So they still were releasing for the TSW2 branch after TSW3 was released.

Bottom line: Don't announce updates to TSW2 then release them on TSW3 day one then dangle the carrot for over 6 months to TSW2 players, it's not how to get people to like your company or buy your game(s).

Also can you tell us if the improvements to addon manager that took an additional 5 months to develop are coming to TSW2, or not necessary because the version released for TSW2 is without error. I plan to continue playing on TSW2 for some time and hope that all the content I paid for will work without having to buy a paid upgrade.

 

Yeah, that's a hard no there, pal.

I don't expect anything extra but things like not being able to use the safety system on the Boston route should be fixed without any need to pay a single penny more, like the manual firing system for SOS. I still can't fathom how a route that was released under a new rush hour system doesn't yet include the rush hour system.

It would also be a nice thank you to release the extended Bakerloo schedule, since it was developed on TSW2 but I no longer expect any appreciation for being a once eager customer to any company.

I could care less about dynamic weather or lighting but give us what we paid for without stringing us along or demanding more cash. Only after that would I consider upgrading or giving another dollar.

 

Same here. I bought TSW3 on PC because I didn't own any of the routes included but on Playstation where I own everything in TSW2, I refuse to pay that much for that little upgrade.

Likely that will change over time because Dovetail will produce a summer update based on community feedback and developer discussions. If that update offers even more value, then I will reconsider my position.

For now though with the state the new content is arriving in I see no reason to pay top dollar to beta test and have to complain (repeatedly, in some cases) to get bugs fixed. Bugs you wonder how they slipped by QA like floating developer text on London-Brighton that is visible on a journey service since day one and still exists today. That route was so rushed, it shows in almost every aspect of it. And it's a shame because it's a great route that I enjoy playing, they just dropped the ball on it.

I still have many hours I can spend in TSW2020 gathering trophies, no need to rush into the new stuff.

 

https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/costs-for-patch-slots-on-ps-store-ms-steam-epic-etc.64640/

This thread is somewhat related. Note that the following is entirely conjecture, but based on publisher behaviour in terms of releases (other publishers, not just DTG)

1. Some platforms charge for pushing patches out
2. Its likely that pushing out an "emergency" patch costs far more than a BAU patch on (say) a monthly schedule
3. Publishers are limited by how much DLC they can publish at one time (see the staggered release of TSW2 DLC for TSW3 at TSW3's release on Sony platform)
4. By extension, one can assume that patches are subject to similar and likely harsher limits in terms of both quantity and expediency (see again slight delays of some TSW3 patches being published on Sony platforms)
5. It is likely that a developer has limited slots (as defined by platform holder) for all of their published products, ie. plucking a figure out of the air, DTG may only have paid for 5 patch slots a month with Sony, to cover TSW2/3, Catan, the fishing games, and anything else they publish that I forgot
6. Given that all platforms that TSW3 is published on, and the requirement to keep all platforms in parity both bug fix and feature wise, DTG will have to juggle the patch/DLC release dates based on the slots available on the most restrictive platform in terms of how often they can push updates out
7. Pull all of the above together, and we likely have the reason and explanation of "waiting for an appopriate build release" (I forgot the exact wording)
8. And lastly, assuming some of the above is true, then DTG will prioritise their current games over games that are no longer actively published. Is that good? Obviously not from a consumer sense, but from a financial perspective, quite clearly it makes much better business sense to push out a patch for a product that (presumably) gathers daily sales to consumers, than to a product they will literally never sell again on any platform (due to delisting)