The bitching about Locomotion

TobyObi · Post by **TobyObi** » 14 Sep 2004 03:47

I have been a 'lurker' at these forums for a while, and I have finally signed up with the release of Locomotion.

However, there seems to be a lot of negativity towards Chris Sawyer for not delivering exactly what you wanted. And there is also a LOT of "This should be in the game, it was in TTD, but CS never releases patches, so we are screwed".

Cast your minds back.

TTD WAS A PATCH/EXPANSION PACK.

Okay, it was a standalone game, but it was still an expansion of Transport Tycoon. It is quite possible that he is doing the same thing. He has thrown this game out, and is now seeing where the problems are. So have some faith and patience people. Software is very rarely right the first time.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 14 Sep 2004 07:55

But there are things that were in TTD from the start and aren't in Locomotion anymore. CS likes to call this the successor to Locomotion. That usually means that most gameplay options will carry over (I wrote usually on purpose: I'm very much aware that it's not set in stone but the gaming industry did create the expectation).

And then there are things that are just a bit odd alltogether. Diagonal bridges are almost 1.5x as wide as normal bridges, being unable to lay track at carefully sloped terrain and reliabilty that decays way too soon. We can surely hope these will be patched, can we?

Pinkyoz · Post by **Pinkyoz** » 14 Sep 2004 08:14

TobiObi wrote:However, there seems to be a lot of negativity towards Chris Sawyer for not delivering exactly what you wanted. And there is also a LOT of "This should be in the game, it was in TTD, but CS never releases patches, so we are screwed".

Your right in that respect, we have been a bit harsh on CS, Including myself (however intentional or not). I guess we should be a bit careful about our opinions. I still stand by my commentary, but I apologise to anyone offended by them.

Pinkyoz

Singaporekid · Post by **Singaporekid** » 14 Sep 2004 08:35

I think it's more like that because we're spoilt by ttdpatch
Remember, CS assumes we've never seen ttdpatch before

Severn · Post by **Severn** » 14 Sep 2004 09:01

Personall, I'm not so bothered about "features" that might be missing, it's the bugs that we need a patch for. We're still waiting for the RCT2 patch for example to fix the peep pathfinding bug, the problem with boats that leave the 'stations' without any passengers (even when they need passengers to provide the propulsion!)....

So Mr Sawyer has a recent history of not fixing bugs. Let's hope he goes back to the RCT1 way of things where we did have patches. Personally, I don't believe that his heart was ever in RCT2, I truly hope that's the reason for the lack of commitment to fixing the problems.

Cataleptic · Post by **Cataleptic** » 14 Sep 2004 09:40

It seems to me that that's one of the underlying causes of a lot of the mutterings about Locomotion. There's a niggling fear that there won't be any patches at all... just a Locomotion Deluxe in 9 months time, then another 9 years of silence

IMHO, it would help a lot if Chris, or someone else closely involved with Locomotion's development gave us *some* kind of idea about its immediate future.

jixor · Post by **jixor** » 14 Sep 2004 09:52

Cataleptic wrote:It seems to me that that's one of the underlying causes of a lot of the mutterings about Locomotion. There's a niggling fear that there won't be any patches at all... just a Locomotion Deluxe in 9 months time, then another 9 years of silence

IMHO, it would help a lot if Chris, or someone else closely involved with Locomotion's development gave us *some* kind of idea about its immediate future.

That is certainly not unheard of these days, especially with the size of this community, and its support for the game.

wozzar · Post by **wozzar** » 14 Sep 2004 11:30

Cataleptic wrote:It seems to me that that's one of the underlying causes

IMHO, it would help a lot if Chris, or someone else closely involved with Locomotion's development gave us *some* kind of idea about its immediate future.

I know that Hans from Jowood frequents these forums. It would be nice if CS did as well.

uzurpator · Post by **uzurpator** » 14 Sep 2004 13:28

singaporekid_92 wrote:I think it's more like that baceause we're spoilt by ttdpatch
Remember, CS assumes we've never seen ttdpatch before

Obviously CS is a 'not so intelligent' then. The TTD fan base survived for so long just thanks to the TTDpatch. There are tons of features that not only were quite enhancing to TTD, but were code only. Things like auto replace, curve/mountain handlers, load time etc were not only avalible but widely used. If CS thinks that after all this people won't see that lacking in LCM he is wrong. Evolution only goes in one direction - forward. LCM is not 'forward'.

Jakal · Post by **Jakal** » 14 Sep 2004 14:26

Ya, thats what i dont get as well, in the manal he writes "people have been playing ttd for the last 10 years" how the hell can he miss the ttdpatch if he knows that ttdpatch is still played, i always thought he loved the game himself, and if he did play it once in a while for the last 10 years, i cant believe that he didnt look on the internet for a fanbase.

Listen, im not trying to make CS look bad, all im talking about is that lomo looks unfinished finetuning-wise, and im really hoping for a patch. CS´ general work is unquestionably awesome, what would we do without our beloved ttd today. And tbh it is rather bitter for me to see so much potential in locomotion going to waste because of some small things that could be adjusted easily...

maartena · Post by **maartena** » 14 Sep 2004 14:27

uzurpator wrote:
singaporekid_92 wrote:I think it's more like that baceause we're spoilt by ttdpatch
Remember, CS assumes we've never seen ttdpatch before
Obviously CS is a 'not so intelligent' then. The TTD fan base survived for so long just thanks to the TTDpatch. There are tons of features that not only were quite enhancing to TTD, but were code only. Things like auto replace, curve/mountain handlers, load time etc were not only avalible but widely used. If CS thinks that after all this people won't see that lacking in LCM he is wrong. Evolution only goes in one direction - forward. LCM is not 'forward'.

You should compare Locomotion to the orginal Transport Tycoon DeLuxe, not to all the patches that were released by players. If you compare it "game to game" Locomotion is definitly an enhancement and much better then the original Transport Tycoon DeLuxe.

Even vehicle replacement is better, because in Transport Tycoon Deluxe original you could not sell a whole train at once

Darkvater · Post by **Darkvater** » 14 Sep 2004 14:59

That simply cannot be done. You cannot expect people to compare this game to the original game. You have to see it as what would you play today, Locomotion or TTDPatch? Because noone in their right mind is going to play TTD anymore.

Cephalaspis · Post by **Cephalaspis** » 14 Sep 2004 15:13

Locomotion has some serious ergonomy problems

. TTD had its information in windows systemated (spelling?) and easy to read/understand. Including depo window, which was more understandable when train is in one line. In LoMo its not.

subzero · Post by **subzero** » 14 Sep 2004 16:24

I was negative at first too but after creating a couple of scenarios and playing them through I am starting to love this game and see the benefits over TT. Still some serious issues though with signals and troublesome track laying on hills/mountains.

But for an initial release of a game: well done!!

Now let them patches come!!!

maartena · Post by **maartena** » 14 Sep 2004 17:27

Darkvater wrote:That simply cannot be done. You cannot expect people to compare this game to the original game. You have to see it as what would you play today, Locomotion or TTDPatch? Because noone in their right mind is going to play TTD anymore.

That still does not mean that Chris Sawyer was supposed to base his new game off of TTDPatch or OpenTTD or any other player made modification. He has been working on and off on this game since 1996, well before the first TTDPatch was even released.

It is US - the players - that have added features to Transport Tycoon DeLuxe with these patches. Not only TTDPatch, but there have been several others. The only thing that TTDPatch has done is taking the original game, and expanded on that, taking it to a different direction.

To expect Chris Sawyer to take Josef Drexler's work and build on that is not fair. It is HIS game, that means that HE calls the shots. If the players want to try to make another patch for it, thats really great, but it is unfair to expect Locomotion to have all the TTDPatch features.

uzurpator · Post by **uzurpator** » 14 Sep 2004 17:37

marteena:

slight problem though.

1. Locomotion giveth some, but taketh some. It is not comparable to TTD since it is not on top TTD. The only thing that improved over TTD are visuals. Gameplay is much more spartan in LCM then in TTD.

2. Vanilla TTD sucks. I haven't played vanilla TTD since 1999 - that is since I got TTDPatch. All players I know, once they got to know the Patch, never returned to the original. That alone should give some insight what players want. If you want to make a game that players will play - look at what they want. That is why TTDP is so popular.

maartena · Post by **maartena** » 14 Sep 2004 17:55

uzurpator wrote:marteena:
1. Locomotion giveth some, but taketh some. It is not comparable to TTD since it is not on top TTD. The only thing that improved over TTD are visuals. Gameplay is much more spartan in LCM then in TTD.

There are many other sequals that have taken some away from the game and given other things in return. Prime examples are Railroad Tycoon 1, 2, and 3 - and you can also see it in SimCity from the first release to the newest 4000 series. (Where have the Arcologies gone?)

Further more, we live in a capitalist world. It is not unthinkable that features not present in Locomotion, such as Monorail and/or Maglev and a "toy" landscape may become available in an expansian pack so they can make some money. It has been that way with many games. A good example of this is The Settlers. In the laters addition of Settlers 4 you could not create a random map. You needed the expansion for that, where in Settlers 3 a random map was possible. In the Civilization series, the Command & Conquer series we have seen the same thing. Features that were sort of "expected" by players were included in the next expansion so they could make it a good selling point. After all, a company is in it to make money.

2. Vanilla TTD sucks. I haven't played vanilla TTD since 1999 - that is since I got TTDPatch. All players I know, once they got to know the Patch, never returned to the original. That alone should give some insight what players want. If you want to make a game that players will play - look at what they want. That is why TTDP is so popular.

The reason TTDPatch even came to exist was BECAUSE the game was still so popular. The game was released in 1995, and there are VERY, VERY few games that manage to last that long and had a continued fanbase even 10 years later. TTDPatch was released in 1999, when you were obviously still playing TTD. And if it wasn't for TTDPatch would you really have stopped playing it?

Bottom line is that it is Chris Sawyer that calls the shots. And he may not agree with many of the TTDPatch features. The game has been released for what.... 5 days now? If an expansion is made, it probably won't be released for another 6 months or so, but we can probably expect a bugfix patch sooner.

SHADOW-XIII · Post by **SHADOW-XIII** » 14 Sep 2004 18:09

maartena wrote:The reason TTDPatch even came to exist was BECAUSE the game was still so popular.

the real reason was to fix some bugs and improve vehicles movement (curves/mountains) ... and first Patches were created only by Josef Drexler for his own games ... then ti was released to the public ...

if I can compare Loco then it stays for me at the levels of TTD ,,, (Loco = TTD, yeah I know Loco got some improvements but currently nothing serious) ... and as I can no longer play TTD without the Patch so I cannot play Loco, it's unplayable for me

fsdave · Post by **fsdave** » 14 Sep 2004 18:12

The reason we are "bitching" is because it is a step backwards feature wise.

Usually the features from a game are carried forward into the next game, thus our negativity has a reason. Chris clearly couldnt be bothered putting the useful little features into the game, so we can moan all we want.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 14 Sep 2004 18:13

I agree with the main theme of the post. But how can you say Loco is the same as TTD?
It has loads of improvements over TTD and TTDPatch.

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