Poll: which map expansion do you think is the best?

[Silver Cap]

Of all the DLCs, I like Italia the most: a lot of what it contains remind me of my country. The tropical setting, the island connections via ferry, and the tolled highways (although here we only had three major highway systems all going out of the capital) even the common bridges were somewhat similar to our highway bridges

The Baltic and Black Sea DLCs had their beautiful charms as well and I like to visit them again and again. Their road layouts are fantastic, and RttBS' village density I've grown to like, not to mention all the added features such as border control and weigh stations that make the game feel more alive

France and Scandinavia look somewhat aged in my opinion, but still fun to drive on. What I liked about both of them was that these DLCs were the first ones to portray the minor roads' landscape really well. When I first visited Scandinavia, I was amazed at how beautiful the scenery is by the standards of its time (especially Norway). And when I first bought the France DLC, I simply loved how the villages and minor roads were depicted; these two clearly showed how SCS improved their craft over time, always setting the bar higher and that's why the succeeding DLCs keep getting better.

Going East... well, there was a point when the player base was happy for this DLC, but that time has long since past. But of course, the devs had to start somewhere although Going East is being compared negatively with all the more modern DLCs during the present, this DLC also made it possible for SCS to move forward as the positive reception of Going East that time (and the money flow of course) undoubtedly inspired SCS to do more and keep going. So this DLC is a good stepping stone as any... Going East is much like an ore that when refining (read as: the hopeful rebuild after the base game) is done it'll be as great as any.

[Octavian101]

Only people that have not visited this countries vote Black Sea as "the best" DLC. You can just go to google maps and compare real life to what is in game and notice how bad it is. Yeah there's cool new additions ( models, prefabs, vegetation etc ) but it's not even close to real life!

[adamgj38]

The reason I didn't vote for Road to the Black Sea is because, although it's got some of the best scenery in the game, there's always something that goes wrong when I go down there- I've lost two trucks to Bulgaria already. And the constant weighing stations in Istanbul might be realistic, but they're also quite irritating- would a little communication between tolls be that much of a sacrifice? My total weight was 36 tonnes at the first one, that's hardly going to have changed after five minutes.

Overall, Beyond the Baltic Sea has better roads and lots more to do (I'd say Finland is one of my favourite locations in the game as a whole). And Scandinavia definitely has some of the best scenery, the only downside being that everything in Norway is really far apart and getting anywhere is painfully slow thanks to an 80km/h national speed limit. That's probably realism, though, which I do appreciate.

[jackalnxt]

@adamgj38 how did you lose your trucks?

[adamgj38]

First one, on a mountain road just south of Pleven that suddenly got a lot tighter despite still having a 90km/h limit. The corner was banked the wrong way so my approach at about 75km/h caused the truck (with some heavy machinery on a trailer) to fall over. 49% truck damage, 20% on the trailer, 10% on the cargo, and by the time I got recovered I would have been late to the drop-off. I decided it would simply be too expensive to repair and traded it in for a slightly better model.

Second one, really annoying because I'd only just bought it and it was pretty expensive (a Scania R730 high-roof, 6x2/4 midlift), was a series of what should have been minor scrapes. It started with the journey down from Trelleborg (the truck was stationed nearby) to Istanbul. No incidents until I reached the expansion area. One accident in Hungary, a Mustang just tried to merge into my trailer for some reason, but no damage; second, 3% damage from a truck at the Bulgarian border that hadn't bothered to do anything but sit in my blind spot; then 5% when I left the first fuel station in Turkey to an empty road- except for one Skoda that was sitting directly beneath my cab, where I couldn't see it.
Once that job was completed (worth £75k so it did at least cover the repairs) I decided to head out of Istanbul. Then a minor scrape on a tollbooth that my trailer barely fitted through caused 4% damage somehow, then the same happened on a kerb in Sofia. Speaking of, there were two locations in Bulgaria that I still hadn't discovered, so I wanted to take a job to them, then if I could find a job into eastern Romania I could simply drive through the other on the way there. There were no jobs from anywhere in Bulgaria to either of these places (Burgas and Varna if you're wondering), so I decided to drive to somwhere else I hadn't yet discovered (probably because there was only one long road into the place)- Plovdiv. On the way in I must have gotten five speeding fines due to poor signage, and yet another accident. "This Scania must be invisible to everyone but police" I was starting to think. It was like it had a massive sign on it saying "fine me for something".
In the end once my money was starting to run out, I decided Bulgaria was not a profitable venture, sold my garage in Ruse and relocated the two drivers there to Luxembourg, and sold the Scania because it was getting too much to be constantly repairing and I needed the cash.

Edit: forgot to mention several near-misses and minor accidents on practically-gridlocked, but remote and unlit Romanian roads.

[Komen.413]

My opinions
1) Beyond The Baltic Sea
2) Road To The Black Sea
3) Italia
4) Scandinavia
5) Vive La France
6) Going East

[DiegoJama]

In my opinion and in order from best to worst ...

1 - road to black sea - Undoubtedly the most beautiful dlc made to date for pro ets 2, in this dlc you can get close to the level of the latest ats dlcs.

2 - italy - i always love to drive around italy, the architecture is beautiful and we have beautiful landscapes.

3 - besides the baltic sea - despite being very flat, I find the landscapes very well worked and especially the number of companies in that region, so much so that Vilnius is one of the key cities for me, in addition to being the dlc region where I have more garages , for the type of trailer I like to use.

4 - scandinavia - i really like the landscapes of this region as well, besides enjoying many trips through sweden, finland and norway.

5 - france - of the newer dlc, is the one that i least like, i find it tedious to have a lot of toll, and the highways are tiring, not to mention that some cities need a lot of rework (ex. Lyon)

6 - going east - almost identical to the base game

7 - base game - urgently needs a rework, mainly england and germany, two of the main if not the main countries in europe, they need to review this.



about ATS - The last 4 ATS dlcs were really amazing, especially Idaho and Washington, they are greener states, without deserts, which breaks the monotony of the initial base map, they did a perfect job, this game will be a perfect game when the the map finishes being released (maybe in 2035 or more due to the way that SCS works), and I only believe that ets 2 will continue at the same level if they start reworking the base map with the same quality as the last dlc launched, otherwise, it will be mandatory to relaunch a new game, as the future of ets is to be swallowed by ats, when both have content of the same size.

[Myquandro]

In my opinion I put them in the following order:

1. Italy - This has a great feel, the density of the map feels good at most places, the roads are of good quality and without those terrible structures from the base game (exits where the continuing highway has only one lane, too cramped interchanges, weird bumps, etc.). My only real complain is the lack of size of Milan and Rome.
2. Vive la France - This also has a great feel, but as a lot of France was untouched by the devs it felt a bit too little work. Besides that Paris feels too small and there aren't enough alternatives for the toll roads.
3. Road to the Black Sea - This has the perhaps the best looks and special parts and I really like the feel of Istanbul that truly feels like the metropolis it is (compare that with Rome and Paris or the older cities like Amsterdam and London). However, I do feel that there are just a little too many cities compared to areas that should be densely populated like the Benelux, Ruhr area, Northern Italy). It's less visible as they made more b-roads instead of highways, which is why it's not the worst feeling, but it feels a little strange.
4. Beyond the Baltic Sea - This has a very pronounced feeling of being off, in that the distance between cities doesn't add up. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are sparsely populated countries and especially in Estonia a majority of the population lives in the capital city. However, the city density doesn't seem much different from many area's in Germany, France and Italy. The rest of the quality of the content is good, which is why I place it above Scandinavia and Going East.
5. Scandinavia - It also has a bit too much city density, but doesn't feel as strange is some places as Beyond the Baltic Sea. The content is good, but it has some of the base game strangeness and not enough uniqueness of individual cities.
6. Going East - Too much a simple road expansion and not the real improvements seen with other DLC. cities seem too generic, roads have strange quirks.
7. Base game

[oldmanclippy]

My ranking (which changes with my mood):

1. Beyond the Baltic Sea. St. Petersburg is my favorite city in the game, and Russia in general is one of my favorite countries to drive in in the game. The road network is the best of any of the DLC's I think, striking a good balance between faster highways and slower rural or city routes. Driving through the lakes of Finland is a treat, as is watching the sun rise over the forests of Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania. It may have the least "wow factor" of any of the DLC's, but it is the most well-rounded IMO.

2. Road to the Black Sea. This one has great "wow factor" but the road network holds it back from being the best. I love driving through the large urban areas and small country roads this expansion provides, but when you're deep into Bulgaria and decide that it's time to head back to Central Europe then it's such a slog to go through the multiple border crossings and weird road network to get back. So for small trips between cities it's fine, but it performs much worse for long road trips.

3. Scandinavia. This one has the highest "wow factor" due to Norway alone. It's such a unique part of the map with its stunning views of mountains and fjords, roundabouts inside mountains, and challenging roads. Norway alone is probably the coolest area in ETS2, and it's a bit of a bummer that it hasn't been matched in terms of visuals and challenge (although Corsica is close on the challenge aspect). Sweden is solid and so is Denmark, but it's really Norway that makes this expansion so good considering it was only the second one.

4. Vive la France. With the incremental updates, VLF has one of the best road networks in the game. A good mix of highways and rural roads, the only thing it's missing is the cities. They're OK, nothing super memorable. Which is a shame because France has amazing cities in real life.

5. Italia. I know lots of people love Italy but for me it's just such a pain to drive through. It's beautiful and the cities are great (especially on Sicily), but it has a similar problem to RttBS where it's great for short local trips, but if you want to get from North to South you end up using the same roads over and over again. This is not SCS's fault, it is the fault of Italy's geography. Note that Italia is still a great DLC, I just prefer the above ones.

6. Going East. Pretty soon, Going East will be worse than the base map, and it's already worse than France and parts of Germany due to the revamp. It was SCS's first DLC for ETS2 so it makes sense that they would improve as time went on. Plus, Warsaw is great and Slovakia is one of the underrated countries in the game. I don't have a problem with the road network or a good number of the cities. I think it needs revamps on some of the cities as well as more diverse scenery out in the country (fewer hay bales and sunflowers, more diverse crops), and it will be good enough. It's not a chore to drive through at least.

[harishw8r]

My favourites, in this order:

1. Beyond the Baltic sea: Mostly due to the uniqueness in terrain and also the neatly made road network. It’s so versatile that I have used four different routes from Bialystok - St. Petersburg with minimal time variations. Plus it features New Actros in the cover

2. Vive la france: Another perfect all rounder.

3. Road to the Black Sea: It’s another marvel but detached from other DLCs. It becomes monotonous to use the same route every time.

4. Italia: Two major motorways and many breathtaking hilly roads that link them. Simple concept but beautifully made. Sardinia is excellently made.

5. Scandinavia: Features some of the best roads and also the most steepest one in the game. Road intersections could get some attention.

6. Going east: Has some of the most beautiful countryside assets. Slovakia is amazingly made. Can benefit greatly by a reskin.