Game Improvements (Split from Texas Discussion Thread)

[Travismods]

@oldmanclippy "All that showing repetitive companies, prefabs, assets, etc will do is make people nervous that that is the kind of quality they can expect across the whole map"

Because more or less, the current state of the map is exactly the quality we should expect SCS to stay at. The goal of SCS seems to be copy pasting most assets fast enough to make the whole US complete at the current level of quality before people lose interest in the game or before Pavel retires. Sprinkle a truck a year and some minor feature - that's it. Anything else suggested is until any evidence shown just smokescreens to get people to buy more maps. Do not expect the quality to drastically change - this is the quality we will see the whole US at.

I don't really know what people expect because its pretty clear what SCS is doing. I mean lets have a quick reality check: we are almost looking at Oklahoma and SCS are still building the maps using the same old tech, with the same draw distance and LOD limitations, reusing at each state 80-90% of previous states prefabs, assets and textures. If you did not know that, you are probably not familiar with the map editor and its clear many people here are not. They think they are seeing new things when they are not.

At a third of the US, don't expect something drastic to change. Just because you slap a DX12 compatability tag on there does not mean the copy paste map filled with the same old prefabs everywhere suddenly becomes diverse and interesting. Come 2030, you will still be delivering logs from a Deepgrove in Vermont to a Wallbert in NY arriving at the same noninteractive deports where the cargo magically disappears from the trailer at arrival hitting no potholes or getting no dirt on your truck.

Why are people still thinking something drastic will change when its very clear what business model SCS is using?

[Viper28]

Welll I particall agree with ya @oldmanclippy. Depends on what a person is looking for. We all have different taste. Even weigh stations, truck stops and rest stops. I'm not interested as I mentioned but someone could love them, lol. But yeah you see one, you kinda see them all.

Highway junctions. I think Texas adds enough twist to the equation that people will like them. We don't have those getting lost junctions in ATS yet. If LA was reworked before Texas's release, we'd have it there. Houston and DFW should offer a bit more than complexity than Portland, Denver, Seattle and Albuquerque.
Airports. Although we have them, no two are alike. Its how they incorporate them around the rest of the city that could be interesting. They are not as isolated as Denver's.
Water Surfaces and Fields. Honestly we have no clue what these are about. These could be interesting I think. I was puzzled to see them but we'll get them eventually.
Cattle Farms ,Quarries, Chemical Plants and Refineries.. We have all 4 in the game now. We know their intent, we get an idea. No new industry/concept. But with these, I don't see why they recycle. I think Texas brings new for all 4 honestly. It would be disappointing not to. Quarries, Chemical Plants and Refineries have been in since the beginning. Time to think outside the box for them and retool. Something totally different in appearance. I don't know if Texas as mines to feature some else needs to take the spotlight. My thought, we get different vibes.

Quarries - sand and limestone are missing. When we get them.
Chemical - with Dow, BASF, LyondellBasell and DuPont in Houston and along the coast, time to start thinking resins, plastics and bio-chemicals. Asphalt, household chemicals, chemicals to make paint, fertilizers, hazmat, etc. There is a lottttt that can be done with chemical. Expecial with tankers coming. Tankers can play a much larger roll in ATS with the right prefabs in place.
Refineries - probably the same but we should have complex ones by now. ETS2 does a great job with huge industrial assets. Maybe ATS adopts some thinking from who assets are built for ETS2. Coastal with deep sea rigs are in the equation for Texas too.

Texas is leading the US in 3 categories. Oil/Gas, Cattle heads and Cotton. I think each of these will have to make impacts for ATS. Cotton is the only new kid on the block though. Cattle farms should be remote and hugggge at least. Put these is places that SCS can't do much else with. Oil/Gas, time to get complex prefabs with these. We need fields of mazes just like logging camps should be by now. We should have 2-3 ways into huge areas along with 4-5 different paths to get to 2-3 different sites within a 1x1km space or something. Cotton....this brings Textiles into play at some point into ATS. Everything around us uses cotton in some type of way in real life. Is this how we get Kohls, Ross, TJ Maxx, Target, Sam's, Costco, JcPenney, Ikea.....no telling but it can help.

I get that SCS doesn't want to bring every industry and new company all at once. It would be hard to find industry/companies for future dlc's. What I'd like to see with every new map dlc, is revisit some old industries here and there and bring in some of those middle men companies. Livestock, we really should have processing plants and cold storage. Milk, we really should have packaging/processing and distribution. Agriculture, we need distribution centers to haul to prior to grocery stores. Concrete, as stated before, where's the limestone. Where's the plant to create bagged aggregates. Where's the precast facility to bring in concrete to make precast tubes. We have precast cargo but no place that actually makes them. When a new map dlc can't feature new industry, add more to an existing industry to get it deeper.

uh, yes! take that poor food tanker! It looks good, but sheesh, delivering countless gallons of raw milk/juice into the backroom of a WalBert. That's pathetic. That thing was made for the "middle man" industry that sadly is so lacking in this game. Frankly IMO if Texas is largely underwhelming in what it brings (and I'm not saying it will be) but if it does, Pavel as the leader needs to step up and take responsibility, no more easy questions and sugar coated atta boys. Making a distinction between over-inflated expectations and underwhelming complacency is not hard to do. I expect (within the bounds of what's reasonable) that SCS will deliver some good content between Montana and Texas...not perfect or perhaps even great...but good. Oh, and not to mention, as far as I know, we can't even mod these types of industry and cargo into the game! I mean really they don't involve much in the way of animations and they aren't background programming intensive and yet it's "hands off."

[jarryed]

Because more or less, the current state of the map is exactly the quality we should expect SCS to stay at. The goal of SCS seems to be copy pasting most assets fast enough to make the whole US complete at the current level of quality before people lose interest in the game or before Pavel retires. Sprinkle a truck a year and some minor feature - that's it. Anything else suggested is until any evidence shown just smokescreens to get people to buy more maps. Do not expect the quality to drastically change - this is the quality we will see the whole US at.

These are exactly the kind of posts that I mentioned in the Montana discussion thread. It is all about the delivery of the message.

If I was an SCS developer and when I see this post I see nothing but a disgruntled user who has done nothing but complain. Why would I risk changing the way I do things when it probably would not be done to your satisfaction anyway.

Now you change the way you say things instead of coming across as arrogant, abrasive, however you want to say it SCS might actually start to listen to you. I'm sure I am not the only one to see this post as trashing the devs and throwing them under the bus all because you don't like the way they are changing, or in some cases not changing, the game.

Texas for me is looking fantastic. I guess I am just easy to please. I understand that some things are missing from the game. Being a former professional OTR driver for 15 years I would not expect everything that happens in real life to be happening here.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

you can add any Industry you want to the game, there is no programming involved other then making the models for prefabs and the cargos, the rest is map editor, sadly such mods are not compatible with WoTr, a reason why i dont bother with cargo mods at all

[Travismods]

@Viper28 Pavel is not interested in making this game the actual truck simulator the community has requested it to be since launch - or something would have changed over the years. His own outlook was as late as 2020 "the user that has 20 minutes and just wants to drive a truck through a landscape". Thats the player that is on Pavels mind. His outlook explains pretty well why there are so many missed opportunities with this game and why its still missing so much 7 years later as far as simulation goes. He sees a casual user playing an easy mindless drive game across the US and Europe as the end goal.

[SouthernMan]

@jarryed I agree that it all depends on each person's point of view, for some people it seems perfect, for others it's good but it can improve, for others SCS keeps doing the same thing and never does anything relevant. But one thing is for sure: We can't always say that everything looks perfect for fear of "hurting" the devs (of course we must treat everyone with respect), we must portray reality. SCS urgently needs to improve its logistics, and I'm not referring to putting more loads as delivery options (in existing companies), I'm referring to new types of deliveries with completely different companies than what already exists. Ex: Deliveries of products at gas stations, etc, etc, etc. And these are possible things for SCS to do without too much difficulty, it's nothing extraordinary.

Another example of what SCS could do (but I don't believe they ever will), which I did myself:
[ external image ]
[ external image ]

[Travismods]

@SouthernMan 100% agree, I think you hit the nail on the head - it is clear people here are afraid of facing reality. If you state what more or less is the reality of the direction of development of this game, some people get really angry because they hold SCS so dear they cant stand hearing heavy critique, even if it rings true.

We have to be able to state facts. The fact is that what SCS is doing now is continuing to make heavily copy paste maps on old outdated Prism tech until the US is complete while adding a truck here and there with no major feature or overhaul to the game. That is their business model for ATS. Stating that is not "hate or bashing or thrashing", it is stating reality. Getting all worked up because someone has the guts to tell it like it is is proof people are way too sensitive of hurting the poor old devs at SCS and it is more proof the community has still a long ways to go before reaching SCS in unison.

I dont understand why people expect one to treat SCS like they are a fragile baby. I think SCS can handle a few critical voices on their own forums and if they cant, all the more proof something needs to change. SCS arent your friends, they arent your family. They are a business, and we are the customers. We pay them money and state what we want, and if they dont improve we should stop paying them money if they don't deliver and we should make our voices heard loudly and respectfully.

Sugarcoating the reality of this game and SCS as a dev will only serve us a worse product in the long run.

[SuchManor]

We should be getting major 'game changing' gameplay improvements and updates every major update. Instead we are getting very minor gameplay improvements that really do nothing in the grand scheme of things, an added road or two, and maybe a new ownable trailer. To be honest the regular game updates are very underwhelming and the only thing to look forward to are the releases of new states. Even then we are coming on a year since the last state has released. As of right now the content is completely dry and if there weren't mods this game would be near dead imo. The further this goes along, the less it feels like the title of the game.

[SouthernMan]

There are only, imo, two things that make SCS take a long time to release relevant stuff: SCS has no competition with another company of the same level and also, perhaps, they are afraid to release too many relevant things at once and the hype of their game will end.

About the hype: They don't want to release a lot of relevant stuff right now because they want to keep their audience excited for many years to come. That's it.
It's a good move, though. But... for the veterans of your games, this doesn't sound very interesting.

[Travismods]

@SuchManor Well done, this is what I and a few others on here have been stating here for years with a lot of crosswind hitting us lol. The updates are lackluster, bring something minor and we are back to waiting for more maps when a truck simulator should be about so much more.

Lets be real, the mods is what is keeping veterans of this game to not uninstall. This game could not survive without mods with such a lack of interesting content coming from the developer.