#10 Post by VT_HMS » 22 May 2015 05:22

The Scandinavia territory in Euro Truck Simulator 2 will feature a total of 15 new ports and ferry locations that allow you to board the ferries directly .

We felt that ferries are an integral part of Scandinavian transportation and decided to go an extra mile to ensure that ship models and ferry locations in the game closely reflect the ferry ports and ships you can see in real life. We've spent considerable amount of time to recreate this aspect of Scandinavia in great detail - many of the ports in the expansion have the size of entire cities you've seen in current Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Yellow

Blue

Parking lot boarding (BOO!):

Amsterdam (vanilla ETS2) Rotterdam (vanilla ETS2) Felixstowe (vanilla ETS2) Grimsby (vanilla ETS2) Newcastle-upon-Tyne (vanilla ETS2) Rostock (new port added to vanilla city by Scandinavia DLC) Gdansk Upper Port (North of city center; new port added to vanilla city by Scandinavia DLC) Gdansk Lower Port (East of city center; new port added to vanilla city by Scandinavia DLC) Frederikshavn (Scandinavia DLC) Trelleborg (Scandinavia DLC) Karlskrona (Scandinavia DLC) Goteborg (Scandinavia DLC) Hirtshals (Scandinavia DLC) Bergen (Scandinavia DLC)

Direct ferry boarding (HOORAY!):

Calais (vanilla ETS2) Dover (vanilla ETS2) Esbjerg (DLC) Gedser (DLC) Nynashamn (DLC) Oslo (DLC) Kristiansand (DLC) Stravanger (DLC)

This shouldn't be a wishlist request. I will argue that this is an incomplete product issue, and SCS should fix it.The crux of the matter is that ferry boarding in Scandinavia DLC was featured prominently in this SCS blog post back in February . Here is the pertinent quote (emphasis mine):SCS went on to say:I, too, am disappointed to see ferry boarding locations in the new DLC that amount to nothing more than driving in/out of parking lots or the entrance to toll plazas with the unreachable ferry looming in the distance, especially in light of the statement SCS made on their blog which I cited above. I want to enjoy the effort SCS made towards realism, detail, and accuracy, so I have to wonder: why go the extra mile only to have 40% of the ports in the DLC support direct ferry boarding?The best part--as I am about to demonstrate--is that the ports in Scandinavia DLC that currently do not have direct ferry boarding actually have most of the assets and in-game surface area to support direct boarding (roadways, ramps, ship models, etc). It just wasn't implemented. I can only speculate as to why.I decided to audit all the ports in the game to determine which support direct ferry boarding and which do not. So using the debug camera and the admin console, I grabbed screenshots of every port in the game. I made an Imgur album of all the screenshots I collected, with descriptions and assessments for each port. To give some context, of the seven original ports in vanilla ETS2 (between the UK and mainland Europe), only two, the Dover Calais connection, featured ferry boarding. All other ports were parking lots. Here is the full breakdown of ALL ports in the game:Color key:White = vanilla ETS2= vanilla ETS2 cities given ports in Scandinavia DLC= New cities introduced in Scandinavia DLCHonorable mention goes to the Chunnel complexes (vanilla ETS2) for having direct boarding areas, where you drive directly on/off the train car deck.So, as you can see from the color-coded breakdown, Scandinavian cities are tied with 6 cities on each list (so only 50% of them have direct ferry boarding). The ratio begins to slip towards the parking lot boarding list when you include the yellow group, making it 40% of ports supporting direct ferry boarding, and 60% not supporting it.Again, remember that most game assets are already there, even in the vanilla cities. These locations just need to be cleaned up a little, and made into player-accessible areas. Based on my album, Felixstowe (vanilla) and Frederikshavn (DLC) would require the most work to support direct ferry boarding. All the others are pretty much primed and waiting. This is painfully obvious when you go into freecam mode and fly around looking at the game world from above, like I did while collecting the screenshots.So what can be done about this?In my opinion, SCS, at the very least, should make good on the claim made in their blog post by fixing/correcting the Scandinavia DLC so that 100% of the new ports support direct ferry boarding.Furthermore, I reject any suggestion that fixing this should be the responsibility of community modders (who volunteer their time/work for free, AFAIK), for what is arguably a feature advertised by SCS as part of the base product (i.e. the Scandinavia DLC) they are selling. Also, not everyone uses mods, or use very few of them (I count myself among this latter group). If a mod exists to provide direct ferry boarding for vanilla cities, fine, I might use it. However, I don't expect SCS to start overhauling the vanilla game for free, but if they want to make a small paid DLC for vanilla ports to support direct ferry loading, I would buy it.But as far as the Scandinavia DLC is concerned, in light of everything I've outlined above, it could be considered an incomplete product, and therefore should be fixed by SCS themselves. Otherwise, as it stands today, 9 out of 15 ports (60%) introduced in the new DLC do not meet the criteria for direct ferry boarding, contrary to what SCS claimed in the February blog post. If that blog post has been superseded by another statement from SCS, then please enlighten me, as I could not find one. Until then, I will hold them to it. I would be interested to see a response from them regarding this matter.Now where is my "Honk if you want 100% direct ferry boarding in DLC" bumper sticker? :P