Quiet Forums!

phill70 · Post by **phill70** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:41 am

I think we are bound to get a little quiet, after all MSTS is around 4 years old now, and the other day i found i had lost my MSTS cd's, so after a phone call to GAME, it seems they will not be getting any further stock in, Basingstoke had none, Fleet had none, but both the Reading stores had 2 copies, they reserved me a copy, picked it up yesterday.
as long as people keep creating routes and activites, we should be ok, look whats coming up, to name 2 YCR and Highworth.

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:01 am

phill70 wrote:I think we are bound to get a little quiet, after all MSTS is around 4 years old now, and the other day i found i had lost my MSTS cd's, so after a phone call to GAME, it seems they will not be getting any further stock in, Basingstoke had none, Fleet had none, but both the Reading stores had 2 copies, they reserved me a copy, picked it up yesterday.
as long as people keep creating routes and activites, we should be ok, look whats coming up, to name 2 YCR and Highworth.

Hi Glynn
Thats not so surprising....as MS has sold it to Atari...who are launching it as a budget game.....proberbly be Â£4.99
Nice to see the number of replies to this thread.... I still feel the underlying trend is downwards....but I hadn't thought the fact there's not so much to discuss
Cheers
Jon

LucaZone · Post by **LucaZone** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:45 am

Id say its not dwindling or dying, its just that the MSTS market has reached saturation point. There is now so much freeware available, and a reasonable amount of commercial products that after 5 years, EVERYONE that is likely to be interesdted has something already. So less people are frequenting.

Theres always a feverish growth when something new comes out, but then once everyone has it, and its common place things will begin to get a little quiet.

However I for one certainly know that although things seem quiet on the surface, as Tim says, there is still alot going on back stage to keep people interested in train simming.

This is why sequels to games normally come out around the 3rd or 4th year.

nickuk · Post by **nickuk** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:09 am

aka Half-Life 2 lol

johndibben · Post by **johndibben** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 12:36 pm

Anyone involved in a long-term project has to think MSTS is thriving or they would lose motivation.

Don't think anyone would disagree that maintaining interest for 12 months while 'gagging' most of the active community is going to be easy. This is on top of the secrecy which has been part of the culture for years now. I suspect some of it is unneccesary especially as nods and winks appear from people who cannot contain themselves

Developers are increasingly divorced from the UKTS community. The forums now have a small but dedicated band of people who answer questions and provide as much support for the community as developers themselves. Some are developers who clearly enjoy these forums .... most of the time

They are very helpful and patient and deserve a bit of recognition for this valuable service which they freely provide.

thenudehamster · Post by **thenudehamster** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:56 pm

I must be the only one who doesn't think that the forums haven't been busy - it's just that the emphasis has changed. The file library is still being added to at a reasonble rate, too. It's not the flood that there has been at times in the past, but that's nothing unusual.

From a majority of posts discussing some arcane technicality, we've gone to an influx of newcomers with the traditional 'can't find this...' or 'how do I do that...' types of post. One or two of us older, and longer serving, members are retaining our traditional shortness of patience with poor English, I know, but help still abounds, new discoveries are still being made, (witness Tim Booth's Dynatrax already mentioned) and new routes and rolling stock still being made. How we ever got on before Mike Simpson's Route Riter, Carlos Gomes' ConBuilder, and Tony Formoso's TrainStore, I'll never know, and they are all still being developed.

That Atari has now bought the marketing rights may well give TrainSim a new lease of life; it would be wonderful if they added a list of online sites like this, t-s.com and Yuri's steam4me to give new users the backup that Atari, I suspect, are poorly equipped to give.

This site is still the most comprehensive, informative, and civil of those I know of; it's certainly the best presented. I'm quite sure that it has a long and fruitful life in front of it.

jp4712 · Post by **jp4712** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:06 pm

thenudehamster wrote:This site is still the most comprehensive, informative, and civil of those I know of; it's certainly the best presented. I'm quite sure that it has a long and fruitful life in front of it.

Amento that, Barry. If anyone wants an alternative, check out http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID3/26275.html

Paul

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:32 pm

Hi
Granted ...I've personally, never been keen on TS forums( unlike the library which is excellent)....but look at the number of hits on that one thread...and thats over just 3 days.
Mind you we cannot discuss commercial produces as they still do on TS.
UKTS forums (PS note to alot of the previous posters....I never mention MSTS or the site as a whole in my original post) on the other hand has been averaging 82 posts per day, over the last 6 weeks....where as last summer it was regularly 150 posts per day....hence my original comment.
Cheers
Jon

andrewscott · Post by **andrewscott** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:59 pm

well id concider myself an old newbie, still with questions i may want answers too. I have to say, and i dont wish to deliberatly cause arguments here, that this thread gives the impression that newbies and there inevitable questions arent welcome! and i think you may find that being an issue

1. with newbies coming in, surely this suggests that interest is still fairly high

2. As people leave you need people to replace them, this can only come from "newbies" they are a very important part of the comunity, its where "the next generation" of addon makes come from, and by alienating then, not answering there questions, or helping them, its not the lack of development/time thats in MSTS thats the problem.... and at the same time if you dont help them, there only going to leave, its this forums, and MSTS's loss...

buffy500 · Post by **buffy500** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:00 pm

I would certainly agree that the type of posts has changed.

Maybe this is a good thing ?
It means more people are coming into the scene at the moment.

I don't think we are saying we don't want newbie questions, in fact I sense that people are being more helpful than before.

Fodda · Post by **Fodda** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:39 pm

Well I find that Flight Sim 2004 and Half Life 2 have taken over from MSTS in a big way. I tend to fly DC-3s and Travel Air 2000s a hell of a lot more than trying to coax MSTS to let me drive a train for half an hour before crashing out to desktop.

It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing TMTS and any other train sims that appear in the future. After all I've got to get the best out of my Raildriver console. And I'm still keeping MSTS available on the HDD.

Of course, old habits die hard, and I still find myself browsing in here each weekday, but I'm less and less inclined to get involved.

Rather like Andy in that respect.

Post by **martinhodgson** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:45 pm

I'm still here... 1 day short of 3 years!

markw · Post by **markw** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:05 pm

Fodda wrote:
Of course, old habits die hard, and I still find myself browsing in here each weekday, but I'm less and less inclined to get involved.

Rather like Andy in that respect.

Same here. Only my lack of posting of late is down to the brittle attitudes of some on the boards, and I am finding the topics being discussed completely inane at times.

Sorry, but my lack of activity on the boards is nothing to do with the age of the game or the "natural life cycle of a computer game" (which assumes every user is a computer game geek, when many are rail enthusiasts who don't know computer games have a "natural life cycle") but entirely down to the fact the boards are sterile and frankly boring compared to how they were. On the odd occasions something comes up I frankly can't be bothered because you end up not daring to say anything controversial because some over sensitive soul will complain, so what's the point - disagreement is banned nowadays.

I'm not surprised many of the older hands don't come round here any more.

Baily9531 · Post by **Baily9531** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:29 pm

Im losing interest in MSTS at the moment, im finding myself channeling energys into the real trains of preservation aka D9531 D5705 and now D8233. Very time consuming indeed, and after you get home from looking at a PC screen all day, and then deal with ELR add-on orders, you cant be bothered to fire up MSTS. Same goes for when im at home for a w/e, id rather spend time with the family now, than get 3/4's thro and act just for it to crash!

bigvern · Post by **bigvern** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 6:40 pm

Ironically, I'm probably more into MSTS than I was this time last year, when I virtually put the thing down for 6 months after doing the Blackpool route. I had the odd dabble but was more into X2 - The Threat, for a while. Rather strange sequence of events that got me back into it.

First came the request from BA to build the route for their Southern Pack which I was happy to agree to.
Next Locomotion came out and after designing my Scandia scenario I thought, "This might be fun in Trainz." About 1/4 thec way through doing that I discovered the source of Swedish 1:50,000 maps and promptly switched to doing the Inlandsbanan for MSTS instead.
Finally, I discovered the gradient profile for the Rhymney Valley and Cwmbargoed lines lurking in a folder which someone sent me a while back after I expressed an interest in doing the route. So that is the current project though must admit I am starting to feel a bit burned out again. I will be finishing the Valley route but after that I will probably not be looking at doing anything more for MSTS before the autumn. That will be subject to review based on how much support the sim seems to have and how imminent progs like TMTS might be.

To be honest, at this stage if David Braben released Frontier 3 and it worked without any bugs (unlike First Encounters) that would probably be the death knell for MSTS - though not of course the new sims and any decent add ons I might be really, really interested in.