Montana Discussion Thread

[saur44l]

Speaking of the cities in Montana,for me personally only Helena and Laurel are somewhat disappointing,it would have been great if like it is case with that clever placement of delivery destination in Butte,you would pass right by some landmarks of the said towns.The way it is now,most of the scenery towns in Montana look better than this two,I am not questioning the quality of the map work,only the choice made what to be included,parts of the towns that were chosen to be represented in the game look like or similar to what you see on the google maps,but still whenever you are there,it feels like you are delivering to some random place on the map that looks all the same,like some of the towns in the base map.

[oldmanclippy]

Yeah Helena is probably the most poorly made marked city since New Mexico, IMO. But then there's cities like Butte, Glasgow, Havre, Miles City, Kalispell, Great Falls, and Bozeman which are all really well done. Like I've said, the DLC feels rushed.

[flight50]

To be the capital city, SCS did not do Helena justice really and honestly I'm only focusing on one thing......or should I say 3. 3 Wallberts seriously dropped immersion for me. Do Walmart retail and that is the only Walmart needed (the highlighted red). Why add 2 more Walmarts that aren't even remotely close to realistic. There is USBB (Coca Cola), Plaster & Sons (Missouri River Contractors) and SellGood (Diversified Truck Leasing) as options. Plaster & Sons and SellGoods are well overused but gesh, at least they would have fit better than Wallberts. Any one of these would have been much much better than Wallberts. They didn't even try and that is the disappointing part about Helena.

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[Tristman]

I feel like there’s often a city that feels rushed or added last minute though. Wyoming had Riverton, which is very light on scenery and almost exclusively uses base map company prefabs when they had much better available. The Bushnell auction is the one saving grace for that town.

Idaho had Grangeville, which also felt a little rushed. I guess both of these are small towns with very little going on, so Helena as capital city is a bit of a bummer in comparison.

[Trakaplex]

It's weird how they pay more attention to some towns more than the others, I'd say Jackson is the best modeled town of ATS yet when it comes to accuracy. If they do add US-12 west of Helena, that will add to the city a bit more. There's something about Helena that seems unfinished. It looks like a giant rest stop and not a state capital, like Santa Maria. And the sign beam prefab on I-15 at the Cedar exit are unique to Washington. When it comes to Texas, I am seeing more local realism with every blog, even with the sign support beams. Helena is probably the least I expected of the DLC.

The DLC was rushed, it took only 11 months.

Agreed, Riverton also uses old prefabs such as lampposts, etc. It's lower than average in Wyoming. What made Davido make so much detail in Jackson lol?

[Vinnie Terranova]

Maybe SCS needed cash due to the postponed HoR and therefore they have rushed Montana?

[flight50]

I doubt Davido did Jackson though. Map leads don't really get to map much anymore I bet. They over see the project and supervise. They'd be lucky to still get to do some mapping somewhere though. Depends on what the are really good at too. If they are great at city building, we need their senior mapping so its tough trying to lead a team and do a city. Can't really do both without pulling all your hair out. Montana was definitely rushed but it still looks great overall. A few misses but not terrible.

Montana was rushed because of Texas. They need bodies there. Has nothing to do with HoR. If they was hurting for cash, they'd release HoR.

[JoeAlex23]

All the towns/cities are built by different people inside the map team doing X state/country, that's why sometimes you can really notice different things, they all follow a standard mapping technique but some do things in a different way from others, that's just how things are.

[Vinnie Terranova]

Montana was rushed because of Texas. They need bodies there.

Is that a fact (because of what you heard in a stream, or read in the forums, or etc) or is that your opinion? Because if Texas needed extra people, and those extra people came from Montana it would mean that either Montana would have been released on a later date, or Montana would have been rushed. I think we all know which of those two options became reality. Just take a look at Helena...

But why did SCS choose to rush Montana? SCS normally has a very high standard for quality. So I would expect SCS to chose for delaying Montana instead of rushing Montana. Especially if rushing usually has a negative impact on quality.

But here's another thing: why would Texas need even more people? There were already two map teams working on Texas. Why those extra people? Because instead of sending more people to Texas, SCS also could delay Texas if the Texas team need more time to finish Texas.

So, instead of delaying or rushing Texas, SCS decided to make the Texas team bigger? Why? It makes no sense. It really makes no sense at all. Well, unless it somehow have to do with missing income, due to HoR or other reasons. If it has nothing to do with missing income, than it really is a strange story. It makes no sense to rush Montana.

[flight50]

Per Pavel and Davido on the Montana stream is where the info comes from.

As far as making no sense, to you perhaps but for SCS/Pavel. Texas has been in the works for 3.5+ years. Delay Texas into Q1 of 2023 and it will be 4 years in the making. That's a lonngggg time. Sure they can keep pushing Texas but its already pushed 3x longer than any other dlc. I think Pavel wants it out. Time to move on. Come back later and add to Texas but at some point, they have to release it. So to them, yes it makes sense to put more bodies there if Texas needs more work. Either way, Texas needs more work. Either push it with the current team or add more people to get it out. In both situations either time or bodies gets Texas out. Only reason I'd push Texas is to get more ICCs going for it but that's me being greedy. That might not work for SCS. Texas needs to have a decent amount of new for ICCs regardless. Just might not be want I expect.

Honestly, even with Montana misses, the quality is there. Quality to me is detail and Montana is nicely detailed. That's not the issue. ICCs is not detailing. Its the logistic of it that brings more diversity is the let down for me with most dlc's since Oregon. All dlc's since Idaho has the quality/detailing as the new standard. Sure no two mappers are alike but nothing has been less than Idaho/Utah in quality since both released. But this is just my opinions. Others may feel differently.