43021HST
Established Member
As some of you may know, Rail Simulation is a big hobby of mine, in fact it has over taken my interest in the real railways, for these reasons that: A, you don't have to leave the house and spend money on an overpriced train ticket or shiver your nuts off on the end of a platform. B, it's far cheaper and takes up less space than a Model Railway.
But over the past year I've become increasingly hacked off with how much UK rail simulation is becoming a bigger and bigger con. I use both of the main Train Simulators, namely Dove tail Games' Train Simulator and Trainz. (In fact I've been using trainz far longer than Trainsim) But roughly a year ago I stopped buying the addons for Trainsim and ever since then I started using Trainz more, because although the quality is nowhere near as good, so much more stuff is free.
The reason why I've stopped buying the Trainsim addons is that I've noticed you're getting far less for your money than you used to.
About 3 - 4 years ago you started getting such routes as London to Brighton and West Coast Mainline North as Addons that would cost about £25, but for that money you buy a route, that came with up to three trains and up to 10 scenarios, and a lot of research had gone into getting the route 'right', these types of addons are what attracted me to the game in the first place.
Nowadays, you'll buy a route and it'll only have one train, the route itself will be poorly researched, so you get some massive detail inaccuracies, although I don't own it, I've been told that the Midland mainline route is one such addon and the biggest down point for me is that you'll only get four scenarios rather than eight, although the price tag is still about £25. I mean for that money I could get a whole game off steam.
But I think the biggest rip offs are the smaller addons, where you buy a train rather than a whole route, often these cost about £12. About three years ago you'd buy something like the Class 70 and it would come with about 5 scenarios and possibly even a few extra wagons or something, so quite a lot for your money.
But if you buy a more recent model such as the Class 378, firstly the modelling accuracy of it is questionable, I mean there's something that doesn't look quite right about the front end lights (often the models themselves are just rehashed versions of older models) and it comes with only three scenarios. Even that's quite generous considering a lot of addons come with even less.
The icing on the cake for me that made me switch back to trainz was when Trainsim changed it's Steam achievements system, although it's only a small thing; its still very annoying and represents Trainsims money grabbing attitude. You used to get Steam achievements for scoring a certain amount in a scenario or driving an electric, diesel or steam train a certain number of miles, basically it required an element of skill to gain the achievement. Now gaining the achievement in the game requires less skill and is more of a marketing ploy to get you to buy more addons, where you can only unlock the achievement by completing a session often in an addon that you don't own.
I think the problem is when Rail Simulator changed it's name to Dovetail Games I think in a move to develop more games for the general games market rather than specifically Train Simulator, this I think meant it stopped listening to its core community and far more to its marketing department. It became less about quality train simulation having now successfully acquired the majority of the market (originally from MSTS and Trainz) and more about 'revenue maximisation', basically exploiting it's customer base.
So about a year ago all this made me switch back almost entirely to Trainz. Where of course the quality of the UK content is nowhere near as good and the game itself is full of bugs, but you get so much more free stuff, (being a cash strapped student I can no longer afford £12 for something that I can get for free elsewhere). The third party community is a lot more proactive and best of all the marketing department is nowhere near as preeminent. This has encouraged me to get into third party content creation, over the past year I've learnt an incredible amount about 3D modelling, so much so I'm thinking of pursuing a career in it.
But recently I've become just as hacked off with Trainz as I have done with Rail Simulator. This is due to the release of TANE (Trainz a new era).
When I first heard about TANE, in the Kickstarter campaign, I initially got my hopes up, I thought that this maybe a real chance to get back the share of train sim market that's hacked off with the prices of Rail Simulator but still want a quality simulator with all the functionality of a modern game.
But instead N3V, the company who produces trainz seem to be falling into the same marketing trap as Dovetail games. TANE was announced in May for release, and they adhered to that release date.
But this I think was a decision by the marketing department rather than the programmers. The game itself is full of some quite serious bugs and really the release date should have been postponed until these bugs had been sorted; a couple of major patches later and these bugs still haven't disappeared. We are still waiting for that mythical patch as has been promised that will finally fix these issues. But on the bright side we had lot of whizzy visual graphics, some silly games aimed at mobile and tablet users and a new website reassuring us that the game is going to be the 'best yet'.
The pricetag of TANE is the most off putting factor, I mean £30 for the basic version is just extortionate for a game with too many bugs. The worst thing is, N3V is now more engaged in chasing the American dollar rather than the UK pound. This has had the effect that firstly we're loosing more UK based users, in response to the diminished interest, this has made some serious UK based content creators become disenfranchised with the game as their content is receiving less interest than it used to. I recently heard the unfortunate news that one of the games most well known and proactive producers of UK content third party content has given up on the game, really is a sad loss.
So what of the future? I'm still hopeful that TANE will receive this mythical patch, that will fix most of it's major bugs and will eventually claim back it's share of the UK train sim market. To do this though it may take the release of a newer version of trainz with all the major issues fixed. Yes we have lost some very serious UK content creators but in their place there seems to be some new ones. I haven't given up with Trainz just yet either and still have many projects of my own in the pipeline, such as a Class 319, 4-VEP and revamping an older Class 73 model. Overall I haven't given up on Trainz like I have with Rail Sim, as I still believe it has potential. I do hope that someone from both Dove Tail Games and N3V reads this as I'd like to tell them to continue listening to their community otherwise they risk loosing their most loyal customers, as they chase a quick buck.
But over the past year I've become increasingly hacked off with how much UK rail simulation is becoming a bigger and bigger con. I use both of the main Train Simulators, namely Dove tail Games' Train Simulator and Trainz. (In fact I've been using trainz far longer than Trainsim) But roughly a year ago I stopped buying the addons for Trainsim and ever since then I started using Trainz more, because although the quality is nowhere near as good, so much more stuff is free.
The reason why I've stopped buying the Trainsim addons is that I've noticed you're getting far less for your money than you used to.
About 3 - 4 years ago you started getting such routes as London to Brighton and West Coast Mainline North as Addons that would cost about £25, but for that money you buy a route, that came with up to three trains and up to 10 scenarios, and a lot of research had gone into getting the route 'right', these types of addons are what attracted me to the game in the first place.
Nowadays, you'll buy a route and it'll only have one train, the route itself will be poorly researched, so you get some massive detail inaccuracies, although I don't own it, I've been told that the Midland mainline route is one such addon and the biggest down point for me is that you'll only get four scenarios rather than eight, although the price tag is still about £25. I mean for that money I could get a whole game off steam.
But I think the biggest rip offs are the smaller addons, where you buy a train rather than a whole route, often these cost about £12. About three years ago you'd buy something like the Class 70 and it would come with about 5 scenarios and possibly even a few extra wagons or something, so quite a lot for your money.
But if you buy a more recent model such as the Class 378, firstly the modelling accuracy of it is questionable, I mean there's something that doesn't look quite right about the front end lights (often the models themselves are just rehashed versions of older models) and it comes with only three scenarios. Even that's quite generous considering a lot of addons come with even less.
The icing on the cake for me that made me switch back to trainz was when Trainsim changed it's Steam achievements system, although it's only a small thing; its still very annoying and represents Trainsims money grabbing attitude. You used to get Steam achievements for scoring a certain amount in a scenario or driving an electric, diesel or steam train a certain number of miles, basically it required an element of skill to gain the achievement. Now gaining the achievement in the game requires less skill and is more of a marketing ploy to get you to buy more addons, where you can only unlock the achievement by completing a session often in an addon that you don't own.
I think the problem is when Rail Simulator changed it's name to Dovetail Games I think in a move to develop more games for the general games market rather than specifically Train Simulator, this I think meant it stopped listening to its core community and far more to its marketing department. It became less about quality train simulation having now successfully acquired the majority of the market (originally from MSTS and Trainz) and more about 'revenue maximisation', basically exploiting it's customer base.
So about a year ago all this made me switch back almost entirely to Trainz. Where of course the quality of the UK content is nowhere near as good and the game itself is full of bugs, but you get so much more free stuff, (being a cash strapped student I can no longer afford £12 for something that I can get for free elsewhere). The third party community is a lot more proactive and best of all the marketing department is nowhere near as preeminent. This has encouraged me to get into third party content creation, over the past year I've learnt an incredible amount about 3D modelling, so much so I'm thinking of pursuing a career in it.
But recently I've become just as hacked off with Trainz as I have done with Rail Simulator. This is due to the release of TANE (Trainz a new era).
When I first heard about TANE, in the Kickstarter campaign, I initially got my hopes up, I thought that this maybe a real chance to get back the share of train sim market that's hacked off with the prices of Rail Simulator but still want a quality simulator with all the functionality of a modern game.
But instead N3V, the company who produces trainz seem to be falling into the same marketing trap as Dovetail games. TANE was announced in May for release, and they adhered to that release date.
But this I think was a decision by the marketing department rather than the programmers. The game itself is full of some quite serious bugs and really the release date should have been postponed until these bugs had been sorted; a couple of major patches later and these bugs still haven't disappeared. We are still waiting for that mythical patch as has been promised that will finally fix these issues. But on the bright side we had lot of whizzy visual graphics, some silly games aimed at mobile and tablet users and a new website reassuring us that the game is going to be the 'best yet'.
The pricetag of TANE is the most off putting factor, I mean £30 for the basic version is just extortionate for a game with too many bugs. The worst thing is, N3V is now more engaged in chasing the American dollar rather than the UK pound. This has had the effect that firstly we're loosing more UK based users, in response to the diminished interest, this has made some serious UK based content creators become disenfranchised with the game as their content is receiving less interest than it used to. I recently heard the unfortunate news that one of the games most well known and proactive producers of UK content third party content has given up on the game, really is a sad loss.
So what of the future? I'm still hopeful that TANE will receive this mythical patch, that will fix most of it's major bugs and will eventually claim back it's share of the UK train sim market. To do this though it may take the release of a newer version of trainz with all the major issues fixed. Yes we have lost some very serious UK content creators but in their place there seems to be some new ones. I haven't given up with Trainz just yet either and still have many projects of my own in the pipeline, such as a Class 319, 4-VEP and revamping an older Class 73 model. Overall I haven't given up on Trainz like I have with Rail Sim, as I still believe it has potential. I do hope that someone from both Dove Tail Games and N3V reads this as I'd like to tell them to continue listening to their community otherwise they risk loosing their most loyal customers, as they chase a quick buck.
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