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So, to sum up as best I can (forgive me if I've misunderstood something, it is incredibly late here and I probably should've called it a night a few hours back, I am
for sure becoming sleep deprived), from the perspective of N3V, the subscription service is being run more akin to crowd funded development, with the reward being early access to in dev tools and some other extra goodies. The features developed from the additional revenue flow are then made base in the next version of Trainz, which would then presumably have its own set of new features under the subscription service. So, for example, a hypothetical Trainz 2025 would include Surveyor 2.0 by default, and the subscription end would be able to test expanded skyboxes or something along those lines.
Put in that particular framework, it does put the subscription service in a more positive light, and by the time the next version of Trainz is due to come down the chute, I think it would become a lot more palatable since these features
will come to the base game and you can choose to pay annually to get even more. However, that still leaves Trainz 2022 in an awkward position of basically being a better optimized version of the previous game without having any real major feature improvements. 2019 had pbr and the new lighting system, TANE had its own lighting improvements, new CM, post processing, etc., and 2022 has...bug fixes. Not to discount the efforts that go into squashing bugs and giving the game some badly needed optimization, I know y'all have worked damn hard to make that happen, but the way 2022 has landed in this concept leaves a lot of us feeling like we need to enter the subscription service to be able to enjoy the full game because without Surveyor 2.0, this full game release does feel rather underwhelming. I think that's what a lot of us are worried about, buying what is effectively an unfinished game and having to pay more to get a complete version, especially with so many major releases of other games coming out recently in a blantantly unfinished state and relying on patches to complete the game down the road. That is a fate I think I can safely say we all want to see Trainz avoid. I know at the end of the day it's down to us to determine what value we see and vote accordingly with our wallets, I just hope that the limbo it feels like 2022 has landed in doesn't affect how it ends up performing sales wise, since as you said, the worst thing that can happen to trainz is there's no more development of trainz.
For me for the moment, the get TRS22 and sub for the new features vs just stick with TRS19 SP5 debate isn't yet relevant, personal storage issues on my pc mean that I haven't yet installed my copy of 19 on account of just not having enough room for another 1/3 to 1/2 TB Trainz build once I have all my content ported over, but, that debate will affect me eventually as well, so I figured I'd take part in the talks here since I'm just as concerned as everyone else here with ensuring the longevity of the most flexible train sim on the market and the community that supports it.
I would like to take the time to thank you for taking the time to respond to us, I will say I have gained a lot of respect for you through your willingness to take the full letter at face value, take each point and provide a response to it. You could've pretty easily chosen to carefully skirt around the issue with a fairly generic reply and saved a lot of headache for yourself, but you didn't, and I for one do appreciate that greatly. Once again, feel free to correct me if what I've gathered above is in any way incorrect, I just wanted to try and condense what you've said down into something a bit easier to digest and add my own comments and feelings to the matter, as seems to be the theme of this thread so far.
Sean (Southern1581)