Both ATSF and the BNSF versions of Seligman 2 are awesome

[Kristian]

Did you try installing it in a unique location or directory, away from the normal trainset directory? Alot of prople with highly customized trainset directories do that anyway with every installation. It's the only way you can see what specifically gets added under the installation of this route. And then show a few screens of your consist folders and sample contents of the .con files? At this point, you arent doing enough on your end to prove the culprit is the installer or the bundle. You would get a more accurate response if you did everything possible to exclude other local customization issues of your PC from the problem. I don't know what evidence you have been handing to SLI in their support ticket system, but I haven't seen that evidence in any of your posts on both forums.

See here for my reply.
https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...-weekend/page2
I hope I corrected my error. I installed the wrong patch..

[kknobl]

Nah, Like you, I buy from both. I like'em all, and I am an equal opportunity critic.

Removing the company names from the debate, because we don't need another 6 pages of conspiracy, I was just curious how you justify your sense of being "cheated" when you are on the receiving end of rolling stock AND a route, while not feeling cheated when just getting rolling stock from another vendor for roughly the same price.

But you have answered my question. You clearly feel more cheated by the vendor who offers occasional discounts than the vendor who doesn't discount at all. You apparently place a premium on the "certainty" of never having buyers remorse that goes with buying products on impulse outside of a sale cycle. Joe's 25% "patience discount" is your 25% "impulse tax". I get it. And who wants to pay any "tax", right?

And you have also explained your view that getting equipment-only is more "assuring" to you than getting equipment AND a route for the same price. At least you don't have to worry about the pesky problem of determining the "value" of the activities that really cost you nothing more, and that go with the route that pretty much cost you nothing more.

Smart move.

I get it now.

I obviously buy from both as well, genius. Based on this exchange, it is safe to say that I purchased the Seligman 2.0 route from SLI as well as the BNSF upgrade. It is also safe to say, based on my screenshots, that I buy from DW. Don't know about you, but that seems to indicate that I purchase from multiple vendors.

Again, you're too blinded by your infatuation of SLI to have actually read my post. I clearly stated that I DID NOT FAULT SLI for their sales practices and that I DON'T FEEL CHEATED AS A RESULT OF SAME.

I feel cheated when I pay for a route and expect more than 3 unique activities. THAT IS WHY I AM NOT SATISFIED WITH SLI. I buy a route without the expectation of either having to rebuild consists, or develop my own activities for same right out of the box. When I buy a route, I expect more than 3 unique activities, pure and simple.

Further, I never knocked the overall quality of the route. I knocked the lack of activities. I don't knock the quality of SLI rolling stock. I knock their lack of customer empathy and this attitude that if a customer has a problem, it's isolated and that they can't be bothered. I knock the fact that their attitude upon my initial complaint was, well, sorry, can't do anything about it. Nine out of ten times, all a customer wants is some empathy. How about a "hey, you're right. We are working on more activities as we speak and we will release them on our forum when ready." Or "hey, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We will evaluate things going forward, and perhaps release some activities for the route in the future." All the customer ultimately wants is to feel that their complaint is understood, taken seriously, and that the company wants to make it right. Not feelin' that with SLI.

I've long been of the belief that a while a customer service issue in and of itself is an issue, it's how it is handled that will either make the ultimate outcome a positive or negative for the customer. It's not so much so much the problem itself, it's how it gets handled. Honestly, one issue will not make me abandon a vendor totally. What might give me pause on future purchases, however, is how said issue gets handled when brought to the attention of the vendor. If they handle it to my satisfaction, I become a far *more* loyal and passionate customer. If they handle it wrong...

As for the sales piece...

If one buys outside of a sales cycle, then so be it. And faulting DW for not having sales, well, fine, but perhaps Scott lets the quality of his offerings speak for itself. I don't need a sale to entice me to buy from DW. That isn't necessarily the case with SLI simply because I don't feel the quality of their locomotives (GP60s being the close exception) is up to that of DW's. Think of my attitude like this: there's a reason Toyota and Honda don't have to incentivize their cars as much other auto manufacturers do. People feel the quality is there and will be there, and therefore are comfortable with buying the product without the incentives. That analogy is appropriate in explaining where I stand on sales or non-sales.

[geepster775]

The solution here seems simple.

SLI, when you release a route for say $35, that includes 4 loco shapes, and 10 wagons, also release it as 4 loco packs at $15 each and remove all weathering, and release 10 wagon packs at between say $6 and $12 a shape. this should keep people happy. Also don't forget to charge for a separate loco pack if it has a different road name.

Meanwhile, I'll just buy the route pack and continue to make a separate install and enjoy myself when I get a chance to run it.

Steve

Here's another option, and I'm dead serious about it.

I did not buy the ATSF seligman 2 until the sale just this weekend, but I did purchase the BNSF Seligman UPGRADE a few weeks ago. I was primarily looking at acquiring the upgrade just to get the rolling stock for the lowest cost. I didnt really have that much interest in the route itself, due to "2003 tracklaying issues" I noted elsewhere. With the everyday 15% discount, I ended up paying $21.24 for that BNSF upgrade. Then on a hunch, I grabbed the Green River sagebrush Terrtexes, and applied them to the route using Mosaic. That got the route component of my BNSF upgrade purchase up and running, so I could at least explore the route and run the activities. I probably paid $15 for the equipment, and $6 for the route that has no under-track dirt swath. All it cost me was the few minutes to slap the substitute base terrtexes on with Mosaic.

Now, I could be mad that I didn't wait and get that BNSF Seligman upgrade for $5 (last sale) or $10 (this sale), but hey, the guys do need to make some coin for their effort.

If they sold the base route without Mosaic for $25, and then sold the Mosaic under-track enhancement as a separate add-on for $10 more, kinda like the way 3Dtrains sells the scenery enhancement packs, then people who are afraid to bite the $35 up front can opt for the $25 non-mosaiced version instead, to first see if they get "value" in the enclosed activity stash before going that $10 further. That's basically where I ended up myself by accident; I got equipment and a route without under-track mosaic enhancements for $25.

Those big honkin downloads would also be broken up into route core and mosaic enhancement, leading to fewer swreg "big file download" issues there. The one mosaic pack could could be used to enhance either the base ATSF or BNSF version, which is pretty much how they sell it today, just bundled differently ($35 for ATSF + enclosed mosaic "pack" and $25 for BNSF upgrade and re-use of the ATSF mosaic "pack")

[Brad3816]

I have everything SLI has to offer. For the past week, I have been spending many hours on Seligman 2 and it has become my favorite.

The skies are beautiful, the rail & beds excellent including track sounds when crossing switch points, signalling great, urban areas more detailed, and lots of foliage/brush/grass in appropriate areas. The recent upgraded rolling stock is, IMO, the best available. Wheels are smooth, most engines now have ground/step/walkway lights, and sounds are great including excellent horn looping but lack an alerter loop and exterior air brake sounds.

Cabs are plain, lacking variety, and the views, while up close (to my liking), are tilted too sharply down, giving the rail a much closer than prototypical feel (for me, an easy tweak, however).

All their routes could use low poly, eye candy to fill the yards like we have seen on some excellent free-ware routes. Don't need all those yard tracks available since switching busy yards isn't feasible, especially those heavily populated with the high poly & high quality rolling stock currently available.

The negatives are very minor and I believe SLI has upped the bar with Seligman 2 & BNSF 2.

Brad

[wwhall]

I've been one who has criticized SLI in the past for some offerings that I thought were less than stellar. That said, I've never had any problem with them as far as charges or delivery of product. I'm also happy to say that I think that their product offerings really have improved in the last year or so. Their cars have always been pretty good, in my opinion. The quality of their locomotives has generally improved greatly--in part, I think because of the efforts of a couple of model builders who I really respect doing work for them.

I still am very fond of Scott's great work over at DW, too. I'm glad to see SLI rising to that bar. I do think that such a comparison is a little unfair, however--for one thing, Scott only builds locomotives and cars, no routes. SLI does do it all. Also, if I have one frustration with Scott, it is the long time between releases--often 2 or 3 months. What he produces is always worth the wait, though.

I'm thankful for SLI, DW, and the other payware vendors that still produce product for a decade-old sim. It seems that the freeware producers of North American MSTS content are shrinking, especially for routes. I think one could count on one's fingers and toes the number of people actually building routes (payware or freeware) for MSTS now. So, I'm thankful for what we get. As for Seligman 2 BNSF, I really do like it. It's far closer to the prototype than is Green River. Maybe, SLI could rework Green River the way they have Seligman. I'd pay for that.

[oakpalms]

Hey guys, I did not buy the Seligman 2 routes this week since no one has ever confirmed as to whether the route has signal stands and turnouts for switches or whether the route builders used the same techniques that was used with the Green River Sub. The Green River Sub has several siding tracks that are unnamed and therefore are useless for making activities and one has to question why they even took the time to lay the track. I find areas that do not even begin to correspond with Google Earth displays--Green River being one such area. Has anyone looked at both of the Seligman 2 routes in the Activity Editor to see whether unnamed tracks are present? Has anyone compared the track with Google Earth to see how prototypical the tracks are placed? Along the Green River there were some busy siding tracks just west of Thompson that were completly omitted. The Green River sub doesn't have many siding tracks and to omit such makes it harder to build switching activities. I know that for some people these features are not that important. I think it indicates the degree of commitment by the builder to be authentic. I am hoping that the route builders for Streamlines have produced better routes than Green River as far as the track is concerned. Have they?

Bob Edwards

[PXSE]

Are there fewer people building routes? Or does it just seem that way because so many have gone off the radar and are no longer offering teaser shots anymore out of fear of 50 questions?

I do agree with the concerns about track accuracy. Track is the first thing that needs to go down, and is the last thing that can be easily rectified if wrong. So it is imperative to get it right in stage 1 of route building. All the other scenery items should be the last concern. Some people will take the track accuracy demand to an extreme, and insist on correct yard layouts and such, but that is silly and will never be accomplished. You cannot simulate operations in and around a big yard and stay within computer capabilites. I would have loved it more had the Green River route ended at the yard limits of Grand Junction and Helper, and all that time spent building the yards been redirected into the accuracy of the mileage in between those end points better. Big virtual yards need to be compressed more like a model railroad staging area.

[apco25]

Why on earth are we still using low poly cars to fill yards and locking ourselves into MSTS mindset when OR continues to improve the "playability" of routes through improved FPS?

Also how is low poly "eye-candy". The current low poly cars look horrible even at a moderate distance and really detract from operations. Using low poly cars also detracts from the ability to dynamically change how a yard looks from activity to activity. I really don't want to stare at the same cut of cars in a yard in every activity.

The SLI cabviews can easily be adjusted to your liking by editing the .cvf files. That's an easy fix.

So far the only area of the route I've found to be not quite what it should be is Flagstaff. The track looks right, but some of the buildings should have been a bit closer to how downtown Flagstaff looks especially on Route 66 where it fronts the right of way especially in such a well known area. There's several buildings that do not match what is there, such as a gas station instead of an antique shop or a landmark like "The Dog House" hotdog eater is missing from the Rt66 frontage.

[wwhall]

I do agree with Apco25 about Flagstaff. I said the same thing about Grand Junction on the Green River Route. Neither look much like the prototype towns. Part of that is MSTS limitations and part of it is the fact that probably neither town was extensively visited by the routebuilders recently, if ever. Given the low profit margin of route-building, it's probably not reasonable to expect routebuilders to make thousands of miles of travel and many days of documentation to catch every nuance of a route--especially when many of the people running the routes in the game wouldn't know the difference, anyway. It's also a lot easier to pack a ton of detail in a relatively short route, rather than one that is a couple of hundred miles long. I always marvel at the incredible detail in a route like Horseshoe or LaSalle, but either can be run from end-to-end in about an hour.

As to OpenRails, I really look forward to using it as it matures a little more. Problematic as MSTS is, there are still a lot of features in it that "aren't quite there" in OpenRails yet. I do look forward to the day that MSTS can be relegated to essentially a file storage program and the route running can be done in OpenRails with the same or more functionality of MSTS, without all the bugs and crashes that plague MSTS.

Finally, to answer the question posed above about switchstands on the BNSF Seligman--yes, they are pretty much there, except for a few crossovers (these seem to be missing on a lot of otherwise well-detailed routes) and yard tracks.

[oakpalms]

I agree that permanently placed low poly cars hinder using the yards for switching activities. However, there are low poly cars that can be used as loose consists when making activities. I use them all the time in my activities. I have been hearing pros and cons of the Open Rails. It just has a lot of years to go to catch up with MSTS.

Bob Edwards

Why on earth are we still using low poly cars to fill yards and locking ourselves into MSTS mindset when OR continues to improve the "playability" of routes through improved FPS?

Also how is low poly "eye-candy". The current low poly cars look horrible even at a moderate distance and really detract from operations. Using low poly cars also detracts from the ability to dynamically change how a yard looks from activity to activity. I really don't want to stare at the same cut of cars in a yard in every activity.

The SLI cabviews can easily be adjusted to your liking by editing the .cvf files. That's an easy fix.

So far the only area of the route I've found to be not quite what it should be is Flagstaff. The track looks right, but some of the buildings should have been a bit closer to how downtown Flagstaff looks especially on Route 66 where it fronts the right of way especially in such a well known area. There's several buildings that do not match what is there, such as a gas station instead of an antique shop or a landmark like "The Dog House" hotdog eater is missing from the Rt66 frontage.