Are you satisfied with the direction in which the game is developing

[flight50]

@flight50 55 Six pretty much summed up why gameplay functionality on a smaller map hands down beats a larger map with next to nothing gameplay functionality.

That's his opinion though which is why I used words like I and I rather. His words doesn't speak for me nor sum it up for me. I didn't generalize it for everyone though. I stated what I like, not what everyone should be content with. I like kicking back and driving for 1.5-2 hrs continously on one job every Saturday and Sunday morning. I can't do that on a small map. If the map was small, I wouldn't be playing just like you all don't want to play because of what it lacks functionality wise.

3-4 hrs a week and I got my fix. I want the same thing everyone else wants here wants..... Improvements. I just play with what we have and enjoy it the best I can til more comes. No need for me to protest and cheat myself out of a relaxing moment, though. This game has been a huge stress reliever on a level that I can't even stress enough.

I'm a map person first. Everything else falls in line for me after maps. Does more functionality need to come. Yep, most definitely. I'm getting somewhat bored too but I learned to play less hrs to not get burned out. I am on here more than I play. I am here for the same reasons as you all....requesting for improvements. But I'll always be more interested in ICC's over features. Features come when they come. I can't stress worrying about what they will and will not do. But we know exactly what states will come so I focus on that. I hate the repetitive ICC's. That too is changing finally just like everything else in due time. I'm a lot more patient waiting for change though. In the meantime, the map keeps expanding adding to the economy and I'll keep adding miles waiting for updates.

[Trakaplex]

I think SCS is just too comfortable with their fanboys and the "Overwhelmingly Positive" on Steam. It's not the typical Steam game with Mixed reviews like that of EA. They literally pump up hype just like the AP101 dude acting like it's the greatest since the wheel. These critically scaled-down maps can get boring over time. and many of us know that. And as @JeeF said, the current map DLC cost total for just ATS is roughly $113.91 with no sale, which is abnormally expensive for a game. The whole US would not be a fair price. Even MSFS has the whole world in 1:1 for 60 bucks I think? Thank goodness for the lower ratings of recent reviews though starting with Iberia. Texas just felt like another pass-by expansion. For 17.99?

[Optional Features]

Yeah, there are many issues with SCS maps. The first problems is you can't savor anything. Sunset? 30 seconds. Uphill grade? A mile. Long descent? Maybe another mile or two. The Great Salt Lake? Don't blink twice.

Obviously it's way too late to rescale the map at this point, but some things could be done differently (like Reforma did) to maximize the space available.

But that isn't the big problem. The big problem, that would still exist if the map was 1:1, is that from the perspective of a virtual trucker, every delivery is about the same. SCS has standardized their docks to an extreme (how many angled docks do we have in the game, sloped or 45%), and they have limited the number of places players to deliver to essentially a handful (in comparison) of pickup/delivery locations that are then copied and pasted between states. If Texas was 100% unique drops, it would be much more interesting than it is now. Now, it's a repeat of assets as old as California all surrounded by new decoration.

It's like a scene in Bad Moms where Kathryn Hahn says she gives her kid an old thing for Christmas and he never notices.

What is Oklahoma going to be or Kansas? A bunch of new buildings, most of which we can't even access with a handful of repetitive prefabs scattered around that we'll bring our "cargo" to. Maybe we'll get a couple new companies, but SCS proved with Texas that they think a new company is a new sign on an old business.

And then on top of this, SCS industry is incredibly sparse and compressed. If they give us a big intermodal yard, we can only pick up our trailer from the first 1/2. If they give us a big port, same. And those two industries will be surrounded by several hundred decorative businesses. What's the largest number of deliverable businesses in a city? 10? 15? Some of these cities have room for 50 or 75.

As trakaplex is saying, it's a scenery sim.

[AlexxxF1]

@flight50 55 Six pretty much summed up why gameplay functionality on a smaller map hands down beats a larger map with next to nothing gameplay functionality.

I think he still just doesn't understand why ETS2 gained such popularity at one time. Just because of the huge map, because of the large number of roads, cities, countries.

compare this with "On The Road - Truck Simulator" or "Alaskan Truck Simulator". these games have much more functions and features than in ETS2, but why have they never gained popularity as you are sure that a small map with a lot of functions is better.

yes, adding functions is not in the first place for the SСS simply because it does not generate income to pay for the work of the staff. whether someone likes it or not, DLС maps bring the main income to the SCS. and then the question is whether this income is enough to hire an extra person who could be engaged in the implementation of a particular function.

for example, the implementation of Dx12 is not as simple as many people think. Dx12 breaks games very often. Games just crash, fly out. The Internet is full of people who face this problem in games in which Dx12 was introduced.
a very vivid example of this , recently published in steam Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. it's full of negative reviews. The game is more than 4 years old, and the crashes have not been fixed yet. or other games with Dx 12 that have suspicious crashes on the desktop.
or the addition of a simple RTX function to the Witcher 3, led to the appearance of thousands of bugs.

adding new features the main problem is what breaks, what worked well. and no so easy and fast. as many people think and would like.

or limitation of the game engine itself. which is not so easy to overcome.
for example Fallout 3. due to problems with transport in the game, developers actually had to put a small train on the player's head to simulate moving in it .

In Fallout 3, the Gamebryo engine was used, and he had certain problems with the implementation of transport in the game, which is why he did not actually meet in it. In cases where it was used, for example, a train in the Broken Steel DLC, instead of implementing transport with the physics of movement, the developers created an armor (helmet) that was placed directly on the player's head, which gave the impression of being inside the car. After that, an animation was played on the screen, creating the impression of movement, although the player himself was standing still at that time...

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[ChildSqueezingMonkey]

Nope, I've voiced my displeasure back in I believe it was August last year and almost got booted from the forum over my rant about it. A friend once told me a story and I'll copy and paste it here for everyone else to see it:

"There are approximately 1678 road miles between San Francisco, CA and Wichita, KS. The top speed of the garden snail is 0.03 miles per hour. A garden snail traveling by highways only would take approximately 55933 hours to go from sf to wichita, without stopping. It's unlikely the snail could secrete enough slime to make the journey, but we'll assume an unusually rainy winter and a very motivated snail (edited). 55933 hours divided by 24 hours a day is 2330 days. 2330 days is about 6 years and a four and a half months. ATS celebrated its seventh anniversary not long ago. So in the time SCS devs have been working on the US at 1:20 scale, a garden snail could have gone from San Francisco to Wichita at real scale and had seven months to recover."

I have 6200 hours and counting in this game and folks will call me a troll among other things, You can laugh, you can name call me all you want, I and others in a discord have tried and tried and tried some more to give this game a stellar rating, but the fact is I could not wake up tomorrow and the one thing I will remember is how SCS let me down one last time over this game. If I had known the game wasn't going to be complete in the few years I had it, I would have steered away. The game isn't and won't be worth the $1,000 or so dollars I would have spent (I'm by a rough count out about $130 to $180 if I remember), I won't get the 6200+ hours back either, but in both of those cases I have tried my hardest to "enjoy" the game. I've reported bugs in the Bug reporting subforum, I've posted in other sub sections of this forum for the last 5 or so years of this game's lifespan, but I feel let down in every sense of the word and it breaks my heart. I got no friends outside of that discord who play the game because they have the same opinion that I do. But since I'm so much invested with the game all I can do is keep giving the game another shot after an update, but even then I can only go so far before getting let down for what feels like the billionth time. I haven't gotten the last 3 states and since the one I wanted got price hiked by almost double for no reason and the other 2 aren't really seemingly worth the extra dollar or so that got tacked on (again for no real reason but I digress), I seem to think there isn't a point in buying them anymore, maybe if we got some free ones but then that would put dirt in someone's mouth over it. But anyways, I shouldn't be typing anymore then I have since folks with burning pitchforks will come out of the woodworks over me "dissing" the game and SCS.

[Optional Features]

I only have a bit over 1400 hours of playtime lol: I can't imagine 6200.

I just think it speaks to how much we love trucks and trucking. If we didn't, we would have stopped playing a while ago.

[Quark]

...I won't get the 6200+ hours back either, but in both of those cases I have tried my hardest to "enjoy" the game.

6200 hours in words SIXTOUSANDTWOHUNDRED hours of gameplay, and poor dude tried "his hardest to enjoy the game". What the heck is only wrong with gamers/people?

[max_cornwell]

because there are no alternatives

[Trakaplex]

Here's the problem though. SCS is only doing maps as of now. And maps are trends - they get popular but after lose it and people don't talk about it anymore. West Balkans will be the same thing. It's like that instant good feeling that won't always stay with you.

@seriousmods I'm not surprised actually that more people played Montana than Texas. I knew based on how much many knew Texas, the compression would really show, and would be a letdown. There were too many complaints revolving around a poorly designed DFW. Like Dallas and Fort Worth were too close so they screwed with the scaling and only added Arlington in the form of roller coasters behind a wall. Reforma could have done DFW 6x better lol. The more SCS gets to the East Coast, the more we would see this screwing with current scaling. Think of Boston-Worchester or Wilmington-Philly for example. Or Durham-Raleigh east of a very compressed Winston-Salem/Greensboro. The aesthetics of the ATS maps will just decline in general, no matter what walls they implement of whatever. The cities would feel more like unreal backdrops. We probably won't even get a good New York skyline. Forget maps.

For ETS2, the only exciting thing about those maps left are probably WB, NorScan, and reworks. They shelved HoR and God knows when it will release. They said when the war ends, but that could be 50 years. That might be the last highest playerbase for ETS2 (if people still want maps) after the UK gets finished and Ireland is added. I bet nobody would be hyped for the deserted area of Libya.

Game features are a must!

[flight50]

The games must be balanced. Only maps, people bored. Only features, the games get boring. Until more balance comes, SCS generates income with what got them to their current status. Maps is what they started with. Everyone knew 100 hrs in, exactly what they got. SCS never sold people on features but they have acknowledged the desire for more from the community and trying to head tgat direction.

Despite the knowledge that the engine is being worked on, some of you apparently ignore that. When the game engine update arrives and features start rolling out, I expect you all to keep the same energy. There will still be something to be disappointed about. Get features, then it shift to game scale is to small. Its always gonna be something. The same energy that SCS doesn't listen, the same energy that SCS won't do x,y,z. The focus of unhappy just shifts. No one knows what's coming, yet some of you seem to know what won't come. We all agree that new features are needed at this point so why stress over it until the update releases.