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Many of the problems are due to too much “gamification” or lack of realism. Running costs are a typical example: in real life there is no single “running cost”, there are separate fuel, crew, periodic maintenance and load-dependent wear and tear. There is also a choice between replacing and refurbishing aging equipment.
RL equipment does not run non-stop, it has at least a daily turnaround pause to get cleaned, refuelled and inspected. Horses need frequent rests and fodder. Steam locomotives need frequent watering and a load of coal at the end station. The amount depends not just on distance, but very much on the load. A heavy freight train running uphill will need a lot more fuel than a light train on level track.
If all that, as well as replacements or upgrades, could be automatically handled with upgrades based on per line, per type or whatever user settings, everything would be both more realistic and more enjoyable. It would need a more sensible (much slower) timescale, though.
There is no major problem here. It’s your decision whether you use trains or you exploit the game and use just trams and buses. If you want to use trains because you like trains, then use trains. I always use trains.
There is no major problem here. It’s your decision whether you use trains or you exploit the game and use just trams and buses. If you want to use trains because you like trains, then use trains. I always use trains.
Exploit the game by using an included feature? That doesn’t even make sense. The game was simply not well thought out at all. It just about fails from one end to the other at every level.
#trainfeverfanboylogic
The game was simply not well thought out at all. It just about fails from one end to the other at every level.
Can’t agree with this. The trains vs. road traffic balance is not very good at the moment, especially in the cargo business. These balance issues are something that can only be fixed via through testing by a large amount of players. Almost every game suffers from the same issues, just look at any major release during the last years. For example Civ 5 was horribly unbalanced at release and still I’d hardly call it a failure at every level.
Can’t agree with this. The trains vs. road traffic balance is not very good at the moment, especially in the cargo business. These balance issues are something that can only be fixed via through testing by a large amount of players. Almost every game suffers from the same issues, just look at any major release during the last years. For example Civ 5 was horribly unbalanced at release and still I’d hardly call it a failure at every level.
Well then let’s list the things it’s good at:
1. replacing vehicles? no
2. Laying track? Collisions! or drawing the track from A to B Fails (2 ends of lines) but B to A suddenly works? or Bridge pillars
3. city growth? Random doesn’t work for everything cities become a mess
4. Upgrading roads? Not even close. More collisions!
5. laying road? can we say rail crossing?
6. Scheduling? Can we say tedious micromanaged spacing?
7. maps? what little randomness there is is in fact extremely little.
8. industry? One final good for all industries? Awesome!Please tell us even one thing this game does well. Balance is only the tip of the iceberg and trying to handwave this with “every major release” no.. that’s apologist speak. Every major release is not in the state that this is. While most major releases have bugs of varying degrees, they usually still do some things right and well. This does nothing right at any point.
Well then let’s list the things it’s good at:
I’m not saying that the game is perfect or that it’s not missing anything important (such as automatic replacement). I’m merely objecting to your choice of words. Unpolished, or even unfinished? Yes. A failure at all levels? No.
Please tell us even one thing this game does well. Balance is only the tip of the iceberg and trying to handwave this with “every major release” no.. that’s apologist speak. Every major release is not in the state that this is. While most major releases have bugs of varying degrees, they usually still do some things right and well. This does nothing right at any point.
I refer to the other released games only in the context of balance between trains and road traffic. These kind of relative numbers are hard to get right with the first try in a complex game like this and this is normal in the gaming industry. These things are then tweaked in patches.
I’m not saying that the game is perfect or that it’s not missing anything important (such as automatic replacement). I’m merely objecting to your choice of words. Unpolished, or even unfinished? Yes. A failure at all levels? No.
Then I’ll repeat the question:
What does the game get right? If you can’t list anything that it got right then it is a failure at every level. It fails at trains, vehicles, city, economics, track laying and design, everything. At release this game even failed at performance and basic file management.
Unpolished and unfinished? These are words used to try and soften what a failure this is. They are gross understatements.
What does the game get right?
Obviously the core gameplay works, that is laying tracks and roads, running trains/road vehicles, growing cities etc. We can discuss details such as the choice and number of transportable goods and ease of track laying. Honestly I don’t think we can find much common ground if you don’t agree with this.
That being said, I’d much prefer to return discussing the balance between road and rail traffic in the game as it is. We can have another topic for debating if the game is a complete failure and should be abandoned.
Obviously the core gameplay works, that is laying tracks and roads, running trains/road vehicles, growing cities etc. We can discuss details such as the choice and number of transportable goods and ease of track laying. Honestly I don’t think we can find much common ground if you don’t agree with this.
How could I agree with it? All of those things are failures. Laying track is a pain in the neck. The collisions, bridge issues, etc are ridiculous. It’s so bad you can delete a tiny section of track and be unable to replace it because of “collisions” even if you put it in the exact same spot.
Roads – you can’t lay them over track. Upgrades pointless don’t work half the time. Sometimes you can’t use the upgrade tool to lay tram track on a road (while using the same size road) but if you hit the tram tool it will place it. Failure.
Running trains/vehicles – failure. No spacing controls means micromanaging the system in order to get things spaced out properly, running them includes replacing them and paying for them. Running costs and the terrible replacement system are ridiculous. Growing cities, another failure. They spawn randomly with little sense or thought. Cities end up a mess.
etc.
So again., what does the game get right?
What does the game get right?
It has mod support 😛
But in all seriousness, crossmr is not wrong… but for some reason, I still enjoy playing it, even with the current issues.
How long that lasts remains to be seen though.I agree with most things in the 1-8 list, but perhaps tolerate it a little more, no disrespect intended there.
Some of the issues would be a lot less frustrating if an undo button or the ability to plot multiple sections of track at once before committing to the build was implemented, but some can’t be fixed like this.. such as bulldozing a station in order to replace it, only to find a ‘collision’ now exists and you have to bulldoze 10m worth of buildings around it.. even for the same size station.
At the end of the day though, I would love to see this game become a success.
I do love this game, and play it like crazy, but i have to agree with crossmr a bit. A bit more, actually.
The game at this point is still a beta. But hell, i’d rather be playing a beta than nothing. And patches are coming, slowly, but still coming. So right now, for me, even like this, this is still an improvement from OTTD.
It has mod support
But in all seriousness, crossmr is not wrong… but for some reason, I still enjoy playing it, even with the current issues.
How long that lasts remains to be seen though.I agree with most things in the 1-8 list, but perhaps tolerate it a little more, no disrespect intended there.
Some of the issues would be a lot less frustrating if an undo button or the ability to plot multiple sections of track at once before committing to the build was implemented, but some can’t be fixed like this.. such as bulldozing a station in order to replace it, only to find a ‘collision’ now exists and you have to bulldoze 10m worth of buildings around it.. even for the same size station.
At the end of the day though, I would love to see this game become a success.
Even mod support is flawed. A great industry system could be made, if it wasn’t hard coded that the cities only took “goods”. The game has potential, but the devs really need to step it up immediately or its going to fade into obscurity. It doesn’t have much time left before the new car smell wears off and people really start forgetting about this game any future patches barely get seen.
Exploit the game by using an included feature? That doesn’t even make sense. The game was simply not well thought out at all. It just about fails from one end to the other at every level.
#trainfeverfanboylogic
I’m not a “train fever fanboy” at all, I don’t even play the game much right now because of a couple of main flaws I see. If they’re fixed I think it’ll be long lived and fun but besides that, I say the same thing for EVERY game, and I think trying to balance everything 100% perfectly is stupid and has ruined a whole lot of games. As one example I think Wargame Red Dragon was ruined by this moronic way of thinking. I’ve seen games that I own patched and patched until they’re simply not fun any more because they tried to make it competitively balanced.
Regardless of whether it’s possible, the game clearly wasn’t INTENDED to be played without trains and it requires you to go out of your way to not use them. And I think people who complain that trains aren’t profitable at all should either turn their difficulty setting down or learn to play properly. That would be an actual issue if it existed, but it doesn’t. Most of the best games that I, and other people, love are not entirely 100% balanced, they have exploitable game mechanics in them and if you’re an idiot who wants to “win” an open ended game then sure you can go ahead and do stuff that is counter to logic and counter to the game design. But they’re issues that one never has to encounter at all unless one actually tries and I’m only against fixing them because it’s been my experience that companies tend to lose sight of what is actually fun about the game in doing so. If they can fix it in such a way that it doesn’t negatively affect those who aren’t deliberately exploiting the game mechanics then have at it, go ahead and fix it. Otherwise, learn some self control.
And yes, exploiting included game mechanics, what the hell else would you exploit.
Regardless of whether it’s possible, the game clearly wasn’t INTENDED to be played without trains and it requires you to go out of your way to not use them. And I think people who complain that trains aren’t profitable at all should either turn their difficulty setting down or learn to play properly. That would be an actual issue if it existed, but it doesn’t. Most of the best games that I, and other people, love are not entirely 100% balanced, they have exploitable game mechanics in them and if you’re an idiot who wants to “win” an open ended game then sure you can go ahead and do stuff that is counter to logic and counter to the game design. But they’re issues that one never has to encounter at all unless one actually tries and I’m only against fixing them because it’s been my experience that companies tend to lose sight of what is actually fun about the game in doing so. If they can fix it in such a way that it doesn’t negatively affect those who aren’t deliberately exploiting the game mechanics then have at it, go ahead and fix it. Otherwise, learn some self control.
And yes, exploiting included game mechanics, what the hell else would you exploit.
It doesn’t “go out of your way” to not use them at all. You start with a blank slate. You can certainly only use trams and trucks for almost the entire length of the game. Its not like you have to go in delete a bunch of existing trains or disable them in order to not use them.
Trains aren’t balanced, full stop. Maintenance costs aren’t on par with the full cost of buying a new train. It doesn’t even make sense.
As far as exploits go, exploits in games refer to bugs or the results of unintended designs. Vehicles aren’t a bug (other than all the bugs related to vehicles like how they teleport around when you upgrade a road or lay a road or put down a stop, etc) nor does it seem the mechanics of vehicles includes anything unintended.
An unintended design would be for example the designers making a merchant sell product A in at a price of 2 with unlimited quantity and forgetting they had a merchant somewhere who would buy the same product at price of 3, which would allow the player to generate unlimited income through trading. That would be an exploit that wasn’t bug related.
as far as 100% balance goes, I’d settle for something about 0% which is what they have now.
An unintended design would be for example the designers making a merchant sell product A in at a price of 2 with unlimited quantity and forgetting they had a merchant somewhere who would buy the same product at price of 3, which would allow the player to generate unlimited income through trading. That would be an exploit that wasn’t bug related.
Bingo. They programmed the maintenance of trains, without considering what would happen if someone went against the intended design of the game and used a train of buses across the map. But trains are not so expensive that it is hard to use them. In my games they are usually the primary money earners, because I use them and don’t exploit an unintended consequence of the game’s design.
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