Unpopular opinion: The Łódź DLC made the game less fun

[Hengstpower3000]

Disclaimer: This is by no means intended to be a rant, but rather a call for improvement and to find out whether others feel the same way.

Since the new DLC, a fear I had in the beginning when it was announced that the routes will be split due to technical limitations became true: 

1. The only english speaking map where plenty of players are left is INT1. 

2. With barely any people going south as the journey will be split half way to Krakow / Katowice

3. Which makes being a dispatcher and to me even train driver less enjoyable because the community effect is lacking

4. This is getting even more severe in all other servers which cover the Krakow / Katowice routes, because of points 1-3 it seems nobody likes to drive the full length north/south trains anymore, including me, it just feels deserted. 

5. Result: For a multiplayer lover like me, there is now effectively less interesting stations and trains to drive than before. 

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I do not know about the actual technical limitations, but I thought about this idea since the new set-up was announced:

Server handovers: Keep servers as they are, but: Once you approach the edge of a server territory, copy the trains exact configuration including delay etc. onto the other server where it would spawn. Shortly before the server border would be reached, switch over the driver to the train on the new server. Even a slight pause could work here where the train is run by AI to bridge a potential gap. Ideally maps would join all 3 servers (Lodz, Katowice, Krakow) into one, while also the joining screen has the one whole map + time zone combined with the server allocation running in the background. 

Anyways, would like to hear all your thoughts and whether I am the only one who struggles a bit with liking the new Simrail environment. And Devs, if you are here I am very happy to hear out what the actual technical limitations are and whether you already think about a solution for it. 

Thanks and happy sunday!

 

[Fightdrug]

i miss the days were people play the signalboxes they wanna play and not just follow the mass 🥲

[Hengstpower3000]

But playing signal boxes is just more fun when there is people around 😄

Edited Sunday at 08:01 PM by Hengstpower3000

[Kozem90]

I have to agree on this one..... I play a lot less since the DLC is out because the Katowice / Krakow part is pretty dead now. It's just way more fun when you can communicate with other players, especially signal boxes.

 

A special note to the devs: this is the first train simulator with advanced multiplayer. You are far ahead on this part in comparison with TSW or other trainsims. Don't let the game and servers die... It would really be a shame as this is one of the best train sims IMO. 

[Królik Uszasty]

We are working on/looking for the optimisation of servers in hardware and software. Some inefficiencies has been found yet and now we are preparing a patch for them. Then we will do public tests to check if the profiler did a good job in finding bottlenecks.

 

On the other hand, more people on Łódź than base map is not unexpected. This route is fresh and offer a bit different driving and dispatching. I think that in couple of weeks a situation will be more stable and most of signal boxes became more available as everyone will have them played. However, people tend to attract themselves, so if they want to play DLC there is not much we can do.

[Shiralyn]

I think part of the problem stems from there not being a server with the same timezone has int1 that has the basic map. You have to switch time (and season most of the time) if you wanna drive south. This leads to less players on that server and therefor less dispatchers and therefor less player, in a loop.

[Fightdrug]

the problem would be solved when some people just say ,,oh i wanna play this signalbox now or that" and go for that server were the signalbox is available, the server would fill themself then alone 👀 problem is right now everyone is going to exactly that 1 server that have the most population you could post on DE1 now as exemple a Katowice - Zawierce route that 100 players try to fit in there than anywhere else no matter what map you have on it right now, and start complaining then when the servers are ,,full" while there are other servers that complete empty, what fixed very soon when that complainers just go to that other server and fill it allready with 20 people 😑

[azzorekk]

Yeah, and it also looks like ratio of drivers/dispatchers has changed with the new update. What I mean is that normally if all signalboxes were taken, then there would be a lot of drivers too. However, this update changed it. Right now, 28/68 trains are player controlled, but 19/20 signalboxes are taken on PL2. Almost always all signalboxes are taken, whether it's the morning, noon, afternoon, evening... It seems like now people prefer to play as a dispatcher on the Łódź extension rather than be a driver. And this is what I personally hate while dispatching. It's kind of lonely to dispatch on a station where only bots come. They don't say anything and it just feels artificial with no interaction whatsoever.

Edit: Now when I checked, the ratio is even worse. 19/64 trains are controlled by a human, while only one signalbox is available.

Edited Tuesday at 02:19 PM by azzorekk

[Hengstpower3000]

I generally agree with all of you, but even if the chicken and egg issue would be solved with plenty of drivers / dispatchers on every server, it still somewhat bugs me that existing routes feed punctual AI trains in at some point, even though the route exists. Especially on the Krakow / Katowice arms this resulted in interesting situations north of WP and around Kozlow, impacting the whole network. Which to me is a big motivator: Fix whats broken as best as you can as driver AND dispatcher. The less wide the network is, the less challenge is there.

But I also know that not everyone thinks that way 😄 

Bottom line: If the devs can really find a way to combine all routes back together in one server, I am SO back every day ❤️‍🔥