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To clarify the "why" behind the various levels of quality, the majority of Trainz content is created by the Trainz Community.
As you point out, in Sebino, the scenery is stunning. The rolling stock is not.
In the Canadian Rockies, the Rocky Mountaineer shows what can be achieved with locos, cabs, and rolling stock (with even better to come down the track - keep an eye out for the ETR Frecciarossa).
To create all 130+ locos and 500 rolling stock items at this quality level would cost many millions of dollars - well beyond our resources and beyond the current content creation community for Trainz.
We chose a path of delivering a huge range of content so that there was something for everyone.
While not ideal, my suggestion is to stay in external view in Sebino, and visit the TrainzItalia website for more updated content that they are working on.
I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. While its true its not possible to deliver 130 or more locomotives and 500 rolling stock items to a high level of quality, I don't intend to drive all 130 locomotives. And I don't get in the cab of rolling stock. No one does. I just want to drive one or two locomotives, and the ones I drive I want to have 2019 levels of quality.
Here's the thing. Train sims are a niche product. They are expensive. I get that. But they are also a saturated market - there is Train Simulator, World of Trains, Trainz, and Run8 to name a few all competing for the same user attention and money. All of them offer the same basic experience, and have the same business model (expensive downloadable content on a generic game engine). Each one is very expensive and takes time to learn to use, so its not possible for everyone to own and use every train sim. They will have one main sim they will tend to use, and a smattering of the others.
What differentiates Trainz from the others? This is an important question. Why should I use trainz as my main sim, and spend money on DLC for it? I have plenty of choices from other developers. Why yours?
Does Trainz offer me quality? No - by your own admission, you are going for quantity over quality. But as people can only drive one train at a time and cannot afford a lot of them at the DLC prices you ask, quality over quantity looks to be a bad business model. In other words, if I know a Trainz DLC will be expensive and the quality will be poor, I'm probably going to get Train Sim World instead. Or Run8. Those games emphasise quality over quantity, and in an expensive, saturated market, that's a winning business model.
Honestly, you'd be far better off getting rid of user created trains and concentrating on a small number of excellent routes and excellent locomotives produced by yourself and one or two select third party developers. Trainz 2019 is a capable piece of software and I'm sure you can turn out excellence if you try.
Everytime you produce a product that is substandard, your reputation suffers and your customer base is left disappointed. There's no excuse for that, and it will cost customers and revenue in the long run.
>> Primarily if you're into creating your own routes, then there is almost no other choice. If you want to run dozens of AI drivers and watch your network come to life as drivers drop off and pick up freight and passengers, then we're also way ahead.
"Why should I use trainz as my main sim, and spend money on DLC for it?"
There is no requirement to spend money on the DLC. If you like it, buy it, if not, no problem.
"Does Trainz offer me quality? No - by your own admission, you are going for quantity over quality."
No, by my own admission, we have a range of top quality (check all the Jointed Rail CSX/CN/CP locos and rolling sotck), and lower quality.
"Trainz 2019 is a capable piece of software and I'm sure you can turn out excellence if you try. "
We're always looking at our options and weighing things up. For those who have been around for the 20 year journey, they understand that like renovating a house, once you've done up the kitchen, it's time to update the bathroom, and on it goes.
Thanks for your feedback.
I'm not saying that Trainz is bad. I'm not saying you can't turn out good products.
I'm saying it has too much patchy, poor quality content to make me want to use it as my main train simulator. That means one of your competitors is going to get my money because they have a consistent quality across the board.
But you haven't answered my question. "WHY SHOULD I USE TRAINZ AS MY MAIN SIM?"
I'll put it in a nutshell:
I have limited time and money. Consequently I can only afford to spend that time and money on one train simulator. There are a lot of train simulators on the market vying for that time and money, of which Trainz is but one. I need to choose one of those train sims to spend my time and money on, and right now, Trainz is not looking attractive.
Reasons why it is not attractive:
- The content varies from excellent to poor without warning
- It is poorly optimised
- Its unique selling point is its community-made product, but does not allow people to freely access this community-made product without paying a premium price.
- The graphics, while good, are not up to the standard of the leaders in the field
- It does not know if wants to be a serious traim simulator or a casual product, and consequently doesn't quite satisfy either camp
- The DLC is very expensive, and the quality can be poor. The end-user cannot buy with confidence.
None of your competitors are perfect, all of them have their own issues. But Trainz for me is too much like buying from a used-car dealer. I'm a little wary of parting with my cash for anything on Trainz.
Others may disagree.
The Trainz community consists of many creative users, as well as people who drive in singleplayer/multiplayer, people who take the role of the dispatcher, people who design their dream model railroad that would never fit into their real life room...
Trainz is the best all-rounder sim on the market that can take onto all of these roles aside "just" the job of the driver that TSW and TS19 offer at the moment.
Besides the driving aspect, Trainz is all about becoming creative. The included world editor is the most intuitive I have seen of any game engine so far, FBX support on the modelling side made importing your own models even easier and in general TRS19 comes with graphics that can, if the modeller choses to, hold up to other current games at no additional performance cost compared to T:ANE.
"Quantity over quality" is something that is important if you want to create your dream railroad with a lot of variety, I mean who wants to work with the 10 or so traincars only that TSW ships with on their route?
That said, I would say that about 10 high quality trains supporting the new graphical features are in fact included here, and in addition to that 100 more just so you aren't limited to those 10.
If you want to just "sit down and pay" to drive trains through timetables someone else prepared for you, then TSW might be your choice
For any other case, Trainz is the superior allrounder game.
I totally agree that Trainz offers some pretty unique features that can't be found elsewhere, and I like the idea that its a way of creative users to express themselves. I'm all for that. But I'm not sure that's is what the developers are aiming for. I think the developers would really like to persuade me, and people like me, that Trainz is a real alternative to Train Sim World, Run8 etc.
Lets look at this from a whole new angle. A creative one. Let's play a game!
In this game, we're going to pretend we are all starting from scratch to develop a new train game. We know train games are a big market, and we can charge a lot for DLC. But its a demanding market, and one that has many enthusaists as well as casual players. The competition is strong, but far from perfect. So we have to make some decisions. Here are some of the things we have to decide:
- Do we compromise on authenticity to bring in casual players?
- How much do we spend on the game engine? Do we develop in-house or hire one out, knowing that the time we save and ultimate quality of a hired-in engine will offset the expense?
- Do we offer many poor routes, or a small number of really good ones? The same with rolling stock.
- What other features can we implement? AI drivers, VR, etc. Is the market for these features big enough to warrant the time and expense needed to implement them?
- Third party developers - do we cater for them? How do we guarantee quality of third party products and subsequent customer service?
- Do we have good customer support? What will our pricing scheme be like? We will be sacrifice some profit to generate good will and market share, hopefully leading to larger returns further down the road?
Now take a look at these questions and see how developers of train simulators have answered them. Train Sim World has bought in an engine to speed development and guarantee quality and optimisation of code. They have settled for a small number of quality routes. There are no third party vendors as yet, but there are indications that some may be allowed when they have sorted out a way of guaranteeing quality and giving them the tools. I like that approach.
Run8 has not got a strong game engine, but it is skewed towards authenticity and the engine it has is very realistic. It also offers features such as AI routes. Third party development is curated from it own website. Again, a good approach.
Finally, look at Trainz in detail.
It has a weak, old game engine that is poorly optimised. The quality of the routes and rolling stock range from excellent to awful, and no attempt appears to have been made to sort the wheat from the chaff. 'Caveat Emptor' sums up the indifference to customer satisfaction. Third party development, patchy as it is, is more of a hindrance than a help to selling new products.
It has good features that are unique, but I'd argue they are unique for a reason - they are not in demand. For example, I have no interest in recreating a train line. I'm not without creativity, but my creativity lies in other directions to creating train routes in a simulator. I don't need or want that feature, and I'm not prepared to sacrifice other areas such as authenticiy or graphical fideltiy to get it. Is the train simulator market full of people willing to sacrifice authenticity and accept poor graphics so they can build their own route? Or run AI on that route? I don't think so. If it were the case all train sims would offer that option, and they don't.
If Trainz is marketing itself as a niche market within a niche market, good luck with that.
Honestly, it wouldn't take a lot for them to be more appealing in general. Fix the poor optimisation of the engine, and start curating their products so no weak products are sold. Make it so that people like me, who have never played the sim before, find it approachable. Connect it fully with Steam Workshop and make user downloads free to access. If necessary, stop selling through their website to make Steam access easier. This all may sound radical, but its the kind of thing that would guarantee a new user base for years to come, not just the same dwindling group they have at the moment.
Of course, the internet is full of people giving bad advice and I'm just another of these voices. But I think something I say may resonate.
What would you folks do to improve Trainz?
Some people don't like the first person view of TSW, which is something I can understand.
TSW is still a buggy piece of junk. Bugs that have been there since the original release are Still there and DTG refuse to fix them.
TRS19 is using the new E2 engine, which was built from the ground up for T:ANE.
http://www.trainzportal.com/blog/view/e2-the-engine-for-a-new-era
TRS19 info here:
https://www.trainzportal.com/news/view/trainz-railroad-simulator-2019-announced
Did you go to the Auran forums via the link I gave you in another thread regarding some rolling stock? If you have not, then I would recommend to for some insight.
You do not want to use some of the features Trainz has to offer that is fine.
Trainz has a wide audience and caters for this and gives people choice. A lot of common sense has gone into the tools for route making and this is where Trainz stands out so much. As for the AI, they are great. Allows one to watch the world go by from passenger view enabled carriages while the AI drive. Brilliant stuff.
Interesting to a point, but some researching would not go amiss. Bad advice is just that - bad.
Maybe trainz is not for you. :(
Thanks for bothering to respond. I should point out that TRS19 doesn't exist in a vacuum and has to compete with other train sims, many of which are more profitable and have a bigger market share. As potential buyers may be reading this post they have the right to be informed of the competition. You can't just wish the competition away, so if I want to talk about them I will do so. And if I want to compare them, I'll do just that.
I admit, I've not researched TRS19 and don't know it as well as you. I make no claim to be an expert on any of the train simulator games. In a way, though, that's why you should be paying attention to me.
Weird, right? Why should you care about someone who has no particular interest in in the simulator?
Well, you can be sure I'm not the only potential buyer who has looked at the whole setup wtih TRS19 and come away baffled by it. I'm just the only person who can be bothered to point it out. The developers need to understand that when someone makes a criticism its because they care enough to spend time on pointing out the flaws. If I didn't think that this simulator was potentially good I wouldn't bother. As someone new to the sim, I can see issues that a lot of long-term users take for granted. If they put me off buying, then they'll put other people off, too. Forum users can ignore me, but as a potential customer, the developer would not be wise to.
As for your website link, I didn't follow it and I'm not going to. I shouldn't need to research anything before I make a purchasing decision. Its up to the developers to ensure that I can buy with confidence without having to look up links to a 3rd party website leading outside of Steam. If I need to leave Steam to be sure I'm buying product that is not poorly made, then that is a barrier to a purchase and one I'm not prepared to cross.
On to some other points. The engine is not new. T:ANE is not a new game, and while its game engine may have been acceptable when it was released it is no longer cutting edge. Its been around a while, and its competing with train sims that are moving on to highly polished, well-made 3rd party engines such as the Unreal engine. In the world of software you have to run to stand still. This sim is not doing so. I admit there are not many train simulators out there with cutting edge graphics, but the ones that don't have them are well-optimised. Some can even run on a laptop. Either you turn out an old, smooth-running engine, or you go cutting edge. TRS19 is the worst of both worlds - old and slow. That might be acceptable for steam engines, but not game engines.
As for being able to sit in a locomotive and enjoy the scenery while the AI drives, have you not tried that on Train Sim World, yet? You can literally get out and walk around the stations, jump in any train, and go through a whole days full service as a passenger if you choose. The only difference is the scenery in Train Sim World is a lot nicer as it runs on a better game engine, and you'll be getting more than 30 frames per second.
Guess you need to do a little research, eh, KiwiGal?