To buy or not to buy, that is the question

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Viewing 11 posts - 16 through 26 (of 26 total)
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  • #6570
    Person012345
    Participant

    My reccommendation is: I don’t know.

    I really just have to echo the sentiments that others have, the game is fun enough but it is very rough around the edges right now. There are not just bugs, but a number of frustrating oversights that mean I can’t exactly recommend it, but I also don’t not-recommend it because it is fun and is a solid enough base.

    I guess I’d say I think you’re doing the right thing by erring on the side of caution. Give it a few months and see what the devs do with it before laying down some money.

    Edit: Or you would have been doing it, having just read the last post xD

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Person012345.
    • This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Person012345.
    #6584
    habadacus
    Participant

    LOL, well, that’s pretty much what happened to me, I couldn’t take it anymore either. It had trains so I had to have it. If you had the money lying around, you could do worse with it than supporting this kind of game, provided work continues on it. I just wish they’d be more communicative. It’s been days without any word or shred of a patch, and that makes me nervous having been burned before. They’re still acting like it’s a super-secret closed beta, which is weird to me.

    #6589
    RickD
    Participant

    Completely Understand Jimutt, fortunately it hasn’t happened to me yet for the 2 games I took a chance on. Its pretty obvious that TF needs a lot of work to make it the great game we all want it to be but I think the only reason the devs would stop working on this game is because of a lack of funds or a lack of interest. So if we keep posting suggestions to keep the community alive and encourage people to take a chance and buy the game if they are undecided neither of those will happen.

    #6593
    jimutt
    Participant

    Yes, as you say it all depends on the devs commitment. What made me a bit sceptic first was mainly that the game is not announced like an early access game. And at the current state I think it should be that (well I haven’t actually got to play the game yet so I guess I should not say too much about that 😉 ). But due to the lack of the classical early access way of doing it like all other indie teams are doing it nowadays I believe they perhaps made the decision to deliver the game in this state for being able to get enough funds to keep working on it. And if that’s true it’s much possible that the game will actually turn out to be really great after a while. 🙂

    But now I’ll be heading in to the game. I’ll probably get pack here later to express my feelings about it 😉

    #6608
    RickD
    Participant

    I’ve played for around 15 hours so far and have to say that I like the simulation model. Although a lot of others are showing frustration as it doesn’t work in the way they expect or understand, I think I have it worked out pretty good. I have an industry producing at its max capacity (400) and my cities are doing pretty good population wise. My bank balance is over $100m and i’m in the 1920’s

    For me the graphical bugs / lack of animation aren’t super important right now although it would be good if they were fixed eventually, and the track building tool is being improved from what I understand so that you can plan multi segments before confirming and laying the track.

    #6749
    bencze
    Participant

    I agree there’s things that need improvement, but early beta? Dude, cmon, what planet you live on? I personally think this was a very professional execution considering the small budget and a very small team (considering nowadays some people throw many millions at a game, have hundreds of people working at them for years).

    I got it because 1) wanted to support small independent european company and (I bought 50-60 euro games before from big companies that sucked) and 2) I like this kind of game and wanted to play it now.

    There’s some annoying things, on the other hand there’s some incredible level of polish in others (‘sim’ activity is interesting).I did play like 5 hours today only, more than I should have, so what can I say. I am not complaining.

    Ultimately everyone has to decide for themselves what they do with their own money.

    I will probably get bored sooner rather than later of this game, but then maybe there will be interesting mods or DLCs in a few months time so I can play it again. 🙂 I would like it if it would be supported with some dlcs / expansions down the road, I think it has the potential for some more work that could pay off (fingers crossed).

    #6767
    bv
    Participant

    Even knowing it lacks some features I want, I just HAD to buy it. I am hoping for a thriving modding community, because no company however successful will be able to do everything the transport simulator fanbase want.

    I find it extremely addictive even in the current rather unfinished version. I suppose the developers may have a translation problem, and it might be useful to have a mixed language English/German forum. Multilingual users could do some quick paraphrasing of posts by those who only master one of the languages, and information could spread faster than if you have to make a professional and formally correct translation.

    #6822
    jimutt
    Participant

    @benze Well my personal opinion is that when a game is released it should already has been going through a period of bug fixing and that all features should be well-tested. I don’t think that just because I’ve got no patience or something like that. And myself I’m not very picky about having to cope with a few bugs as long as it’s not enough to ruin my gameplay experience. No, I’ve played a lot of early access games and also games that have been released before they were really ready. And from that I’ve learned that it’s often very risky. Many games that could have turned out just great didn’t, because of the fact that the developers where not able to make the players happy before they completely lost interest in the game.

    By the way I did write that based from what I had read and seen it looked like it was in early Beta. As I said I had not played the game, so I could not give an accurate view on that. That’s why I think you were overreacting a little bit when you asked me which planet I live on 😉

    When it comes to whether the game is polished enough for being released it also depends a lot on your personal thoughts and expectations. I also believe that the developers have done a really great job based on how few they are. Though this is a genre where you’ll find many hardcore sim players who want an extensive and complete game. And as this game is called “Train Fever” and announced as a game where you’re supposed to build a train network I believe there are many train-fans here that expect there to be really good functionality for the train system.

    As habadacus mentioned the track laying system really isn’t optimal. It’s not easy to upgrade tracks and you can’t upgrade stations. The signals seem to be very limited in some cases. It’s hard to create complex network and getting the behaviour you want. I haven’t tried building very complex tracks yet but based on what I’ve seen and felt this far the signal system could really need some more work. I mean, constructing an overtake track shouldn’t be that hard (perhaps it isn’t, I might just be bad at it). If such things are missing I really understand why people might find the game lacking in features.

    Personally I usually like to have as much advanced features in sim games as possible and I like being able to control as many aspects of the game as possible. Because else it’s just an other arcade game. And I believe that attention to detail like animations (you’ll need to find an other game to see them 😉 ) and proper (working) grade crossings also contributes to the general gameplay experience.

    Now to my own experience with the game. I have only played for a couple of hours yet, but this far I really like it. The visuals are quite nice (some animations would be nice though 😉 ). Though the farmlands occur pretty flat and I would like some more forest areas. Haven’t really seen a landscape that looks like the one in-game somewhere in the world. But that’s not a very big deal at least. 🙂

    The actual gameplay seems pretty good so far, at least I’m enjoying it. I do have to struggle a bit to get along with the track laying system. And the slope tool doesn’t really seem to work very well at all times. Other then that I can’t say very much about it yet. I do think that I’ll continue to play the game for quite a while though, especially if we get some nice updates. 🙂

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by jimutt.
    #6837
    bencze
    Participant

    It is indeed difficult to build tracks, in my current game I spent all money and the 10m loan to build one rather short line because it was difficult terrain and I wasted a lot of time and money by trying things I had to delete. Few decades later I replaced it with trucks as it was just a goods line supplying a city and there was no way to make it profitable at all. Slopes, collisions, terrain collisions are a nightmare.

    I don’t know how beta was but I’m sure it was much worse, currently I find it very playable. There’s hundreds of posts, everyone wants someting while the devs probably only want to get a good nights sleep. 🙂 there’s not even one week since release and then linux and mac version come out tomorrow if all goes well. Maybe I’m just a realist but I suppose it will be a few weeks to sort out the more annoying bugs and then hopefully they will implement some improvements as well and however much we’d want it to happen overnight it will be some time to do it.

    I have been waiting since the project was started on gambitious maybe 1.5 year or so ago. Perhaps another 1.5 years of development would have made it better by release but unfinished, I wouldn’t call it that…

    Technically Openttd is much more mature (ok, that’s years and years of development), but it has 0 detail, and by detail level in TF I’m not talking of gfx but for example the people driven economy system (reminds me a bit of railroad tycoon 3), realism of cities (sims living their lives and this drives demand for transportation), pedestrians and traffic jams in cities etc. which I find quite cool. (remember I have been playing openttd for months so maybe I’m starved for these things 🙂 )

    #6947
    nickos111
    Participant

    If they leave this game like it is, that would be a shame. Thats why i sincerely hope they invest alot of their time in this game to improve it. Thats why i bought it. Cuz lets face it, it needs alot of tweeking to be worth the money. Thats my opinion.

    It has so much potential. Hope they dont mess it up.

    #7060
    xynix
    Participant

    Well heres the deal and it really depends on how you play games. First off this game is not complete. I feel there is a strong inclination to rely on modders who aren’t getting paid. Build a game and then let modders improve upon it but they’re not there to BUILD the game right?

    It’s buggy and it crashes. I save after I do every task. Small things are very hard to accomplish and have knock on effects that can be frustrating. i.e. if you want to upgrade a train you have to make a new train first and assign it the line. If you don’t then the production will literally be cut in half and in some cases cease for several months. If you have many things relying on this such as goods going to towns it can effect everything from goods trucks to the busses providing internal traffic to outbound people movers.

    Upgrading train lines will also have this effect. If you bulldoze a section of rail to install faster rail the production can stop all together because the line is broke.

    This can be summed up in basic functionality: save games. No way to delete locally, no way to select from a menu a write over, just VERY basic stuff. Also there aren’t any instructions! They got $300,000 from a kickstarter… Spend $2500 and hire a writer for crying out loud. I bet if they posted an offer for someone on this forum to write a comprehensive manual for $2500 they would have many many takers.

    With that said I don’t buy EA games because they charge twice as much for similarly incomplete products except they offer fixes in the form of DRM. You know how this goes.

Viewing 11 posts - 16 through 26 (of 26 total)
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