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to be honest I'm saddened by this update, I mean the whole shake up about bans and punishment lengths is a step in the right direction and a positive step towards a better future for TMP, my concerns are the changes to save editing and what you can and cannot do now. I mean, the rules as they it stood were pretty clear cut and for someone like me who enjoys building edited trucks and trailers, you knew what was allowed and what wasn't. now you can pretty much do no type of save edit at all for trailers and very minimal changes to trucks thanks to the new rules. as said before, changes are supposed to try and be in the right direction, but this change in some respects is a good few steps backwards, yes ultimately TMP is aiming for a completely simulation based world, which is both good and bad, but ultimately the "simulator" is nothing more than a game and by claiming things should and should not be included in the game simply because its not "realistic" is rather far fetched, I mean come on, unless TMP has thousands of staff all over Europe and the USA reporting back how every single truck and trailer looks and the "modifications" that are on said trucks and trailers, then allow those of us who want to drive more custom looking trucks and trailers around do so. Bring back the old save editing rules!

Singleplayer or not, it’s still a game, as long as you are not breaking the rules, I.e, not ramming people, not being useless traffic, not driving the wrong way, not excessively save editing to the point that your hit box is 2 lanes wide, not impersonating an admin etc etc, that does not mean you HAVE to play like it’s a 1:1 ratio against the real world. Like I’ve said before, an im getting tired of saying, every player who joins TMP should NOT have to play in 1 of 2 playstyles, people should be allowed to play how they want, WITHIN REASON, if you want to play 100% realistically, go ahead, you want to play semi realistically, meaning you follow all road rules, except speed limits, you should be allowed to, want to play as if it’s nfs, go ahead, there’s arcade servers for you, currently, it’s a case of, either you play 100% legit or you play like it’s nfs, those who play in the middle are the ones, like me, who are being messed with. Like me I said before, just because you want to do 30-50 mph on every road, doesn’t mean everyone else wants to, multiplayer, is MULTI player. It’s not a case of “one size fits all”, at least it shouldn’t be, Also, please refrain from thinking I personally ruin other people’s gameplay or have no intention of giving any respect towards other players, because you are 110% wrong, just because I like to play casually and drive faster than the speed limit when road conditions allow, does not mean I’m out to ram every person or can’t keep control of my vehicle. Not to mention, telling someone “if the sim servers aren’t your playstyle, go play arcade” is the height of rudeness because people should be allowed to do what they want, not what someone else thinks they should do. Like ive said before, yet again, having a server that’s dedicated to those who want to play 100% like real life is fine, having a server for those who only bought ETS2 so they could mimic Need for Speed, they have a server, that’s fine, but there is a vast number of people within this community or would like a mix of both servers, it’s not about, oh you want to go and cause trouble, not at all, it’s about being able to enjoy the game for what it is and still feel like you are responsible for your actions. The problem people have is that unless you want to play like a real HGV driver, you’re stuck with a dead no Collide server, that’s the problem, as I keep saying, there are more than 2 ways to play ETS2 and ATS, it cant be made any more simple than that. The thing that bugs me the most is people who feel they are obligated to try and ram down people’s throats that ETS2 and ATS should be driven like real life, as I said before, the games are not designed to be 100% realistic, for starters you can’t get out of your truck and do anything by hand, you have no physical damage or dirt, you don’t need to apply for a license or fill out manifests and legal driving documents, you don’t have to take mandatory breaks every few hours by law, you don’t have to deal with break downs or tires blowing out or loads shifting, you don’t have to deal with adverse weather conditions or have to consider winds while driving certain loads around, the list goes on and on, hence why ETS2 and ATS are deemed “casual simulators” because they are semi realistic, but can be played casually by any person from any place in the world.

@Glada_Laxen Technically ETS2 and ATS are not true to real life, so trying to make a multiplayer that goes against the basic principles in the base game is wrong, I mean come on, if the game was really a true sim we wouldn’t be able to disable speed limiters or traffic fines or be able to adjust suspension stiffness and truck stability. The thing that a hat a lot of people get wrong is that they expect every player to fall into one of two categories, either someone who strictly does the exact speed limit and does everything quite literally by the book 100% of the time or someone is a troll/NFS fanatic and wants to do 120MPH everywhere, have no collisions and just generally not take anything seriously. The reality is, is that there are categories of players who sit in between the hardcore sim fans and the trolls, those who play by the rules but feel it monotonous to go 55mph or slower everywhere, yet still are responsible when it comes to managing their speed and position on the road, these are the people who are getting the proverbial short end of the stick with the whole “road to simulation” changes. The thing is, you can still “mess around” yet not ruin the “experience” for other people, like I said, a multiplayer is never black or white in terms of playstyles, there are always people who sit in between in the grey areas. A multiplayer, by definition, means multiple players, meaning multiple ways of approaching a situation and solving said situation, it’s bad for business to try and force everyone into one approach or another approach, I mean, how would you feel if TMP suddenly turned all four servers into no Collide, no limiter, no rule servers?

The thing is, why should one admin be super strict, yet another will allow certain things, shouldn’t it be a uniform thing where if x incident happens and y incident happened as a result, then z punishment is justified, it should never be oh, admin number one will give a 2 month ban for, lets say, ramming someone, yet admin number two will just kick the person in the same scenario, it should be one OR the other, clearly defined in the rules for all to see. Hence why I said trigger happy, because it shouldn’t be admin discretion on what punishment is given, the discretion should be whether to give said punishment or not based upon evidence provided. Not everything in the world is ever black and white, there are always plenty of incidents and scenarios that are in between, plenty of things that may either look intentional but are in fact a total accident or may look accidental but are actually done on purpose, so you can’t tell be the only 1% or less are indistinguishable, that’s realms of fiction in my opinion, I would make a guess of more around 30-40% or lower are easily distinguishable, the rest are much more difficult. For example, take that someone’s doing between 55-60MPH on a back road like c-d but traffic density is much lower, yet the traffic ahead suddenly stops either because of a wreck or lag, that person slams on every brake available to stop but ends up rear ending the person ahead, what punishment would you issue?

Honestly, for my I’m all for tougher punishments on specific incidents, I mean, there’s no sense in permanent banning someone for minor offences, offences that don’t do harm to others or are purely by accident. My fear is, is that all it takes is a trigger happy admin to start abusing the tougher rules by insta banning people for things that don’t need that sort of excessive punishment, all that will do is deter more normal drivers away from wanting to play TMP, yet the people that the rules are supposed to deter just carry on causing problems over and over again. The issue with with this new concept is that, although it may get rid of a lot of trolls who are physically seen by an admin, but there will still be trolls who cause problems either when there’s no admin online or in areas that admins do t regularly check, that allows the trolls to spend however long it takes for someone to record them, make a web report and to have that report claimed and reviewed, which might take a few hours, but most likely will take a few days if not weeks, thus making stricter punishments, in that sense, null and void. Furthermore, it’s extremely difficult to tell what can be deemed intentional and what can be deemed an accident, it’s next to impossible, so essentially people will drive in TMP constantly worrying about if something happens and they end up accidentally running into someone, even though they have no intention to cause harm to anyone, they can be potentially banned under the new rules. Like I said in the previous Road to Simulation, there’s more than one cause of most issues seen on the servers, but at there are a lot of different options open in terms of solutions to said problems, you can’t expect that the most obvious solution to be the one that solves everything. Sometimes it’s better to go back to the drawing board and tackle the problems from a better position, especially when you are in charge of a MULTIplayer mod, a mod that, for years, has had a fairly positive community, and that’s the thing, TMP is just that, a community, and with a community, compromise is the name of the game, it should always be about the WHOLE community and what they want, it’s all about keeping the vast majority of people happy. At the moment there really isn’t any definition on what TMP is anymore, the servers are a mess, at least before the changes there was a safe place for those who wanted to play hardcore simulation mod and be left in peace for the most part, now where can they go? Sim 1 is just a renamed EU2, sim2 is like an overspill from sim 1, it’s not quite as crazy, but it still has the same issues, then there’s the arcade server which barely ever break a few hundred players total during an average day, kinda shows that people don’t like the idea of having no Collide. i mean, if staff have the attitude of “were not ever going to change the server rules back” well then enjoy having the exact same problems you’ve had since 2014 because all we have done is gone full circle back to the start of TMP again,.

The key word you missed was IF, i would understand if I’d said to you “oh, seeing as YOU love empty roads”, inferring that you spend 24/7 in the most dead parts of the map, yet what I actually said was “IF you love empty roads”, inferring that there is a CHANCE, not a 100% legit scientifically proven fact, that you drive on empty roads. First of all, I don’t NEED to be convinced of anything, do not try and surmise what I know, it’s fact that the further you stray from C-D and western, south western and northern Germany, the less people you see, the further east, north, west or south of the area that encompasses Calais-south of Lille and From Berlin across to Bremen and south as far as Cologne, the less people you see. Yes there are pockets of traffic in other areas, particularly in cities such as Oslo, but on the open road? Traffic is much thinner. Pas for the “VAST” majority? All you have to do is open the real time map on the website, look at SIM1 and then count the number of dots you see in the busy areas, better still, listen to the traffic reports and read the traffic page, I’m not saying that 4200 people are all crammed into a 500 mile radius, but the highest density of people is in that area, what’s more, there is a lot more traffic heading to and from the busier areas, hence why I said, there is a certain radius around the busiest areas where you will find more people than anywhere else on the map with the same square mile radius. Yes, as I stated previously, I’ve driven from St Petersburg to Berlin many times and recently found a new favourite route from Nuremberg to Plymouth. Like I said before, in YOUR experience, things seem to have miraculously gone from crap to perfect with the simple addition of 20MPH slower speeds? Hmmmm, okay? Somehow I don’t believe you. The same problems still occur no matter where you are on the map, you could be in Poland and still hit a troll, both before and after the update, just because for you personally, things seem to have improved 1000%, doesn’t speak for the majority of players, if that were true, then there would be no reports made daily, no kicks or bans being issued by admins all across the map. Like I said before, speed does nothing to change someone’s driving abilities, I would argue that a lower speed makes people more likely to be careless because there’s no danger level, I mean, what does adding a speed limiter do to stop people blocking? Stop people ramming? Stop people speed hacking or no clip hacking? Stop people driving wrong way and then blaming you for hitting them? I could go on and on, but honestly? The answer is NOTHING! Same issues, just getting to your destination takes longer and you’re more likely to get trolled trying to get their because the limiters stop you from getting passed or away from trolls. Like me I said before, I wish that TMP would learn from the past where 68MPH limiters were in place because back then, it’s exactly the same as the here and now.

The thing is, that’s the whole point of playing online, to play with other people, I mean, if you love endless empty roadswhere you might see 1 truck every 30 minutes real time, then fine, you can get near enough the same effect in SP with traffic density mods installed or traffic turned off completely through console commands, but the vast majority of people enjoy driving through the busier areas because you see people and it’s more of a challenge, (and in my opinion, more realistic), than being somewhere where there’s no traffic, no threat. its a no brainier that driving in less populated, dead, areas is going to yield less issues because there’s nothing to cause you issues. Yes there are other parts of the map where there are a few more people, but it’s subject to DLC, plus even those areas are subject to trolling. The bottom line is, people drive C-D because it’s where the most traffic is, people like traffic, whether it be stationary or moving. To be fair, trolling occurs everywhere on the map, doesn’t matter if you’re on C-D or in Far East Germany on the border with Poland, it’s something that’s been a part of TMP since the start. Im just saddened that TMP hasn’t learnt from the past, long before C-D became a prime place to be, we had 68MPH limiters back then, yet we still had trolling, we still had the same issues that we have nowadays, then EU2 opened with no limiters and everyone jumped on that server to drive, now we’re back to the same thing we had back in 2015, limiters, yet miraculously, still have the same problems, we still have trolling, we still have roads being choked by crashes, it’s just the same thing again. It’s almost as if slowing traffic down makes little to no difference to the volume of problems on the server. The thing is, people can still lose control of their vehicle at 20MPH, 1 second lapse in concentration and its game over, no matter how fast you’re going. As I’ve said before, the main issues that keep being reported, things like, trolling, intentional ramming, blocking, useless traffic etc, these are the rules that need super high punishments to stem the flow of incidents, you stem that problem, you solve most of TMPs problems.

Well I can assure you it was FernandoCR[ESP] that I saw doing 37MPH down C-D a few months ago, so again, unless someone literally copied your name ingame, I don’t know what to tell you, I mean, I could see if I still have the logs from then, but my memory is pretty good.. Anyway, on the subject of the “road to simulation”, yes a simulation attitude is good in respects, but TMP Needs to allow all player types, not just 1 or 2, same as banning triple trailers, I’ve driven behind and with people who have run triples, not seen anyone’s game crash, not had any issues, yet they’re not allowed anymore, even though they weren’t much bigger than a HCT in terms of length. Now that the latest version of ATS is once again supported, I don’t play ETS2 for fun anymore, only for convoys and events, I’m sick of the harassment from trolls, especially in areas that used to be a safe place to drive, at least with ATS you can go faster and not be trolled.

Well then I would check your passwords because someone with your exact name drove down C-D about 2 months ago. Overspeeding, or more commonly know as, speeding, isn’t reckless, sure it can be constipated if the person driving said vehicle does not know or understand the limitations of both themselves or the vehicle they are in control of, personally, I’m comfortable driving a truck in a video game at 80MPH, depending on road conditions, traffic and what road etc, that does NOT make me a reckless driver, I still stop before hitting someone, slow down for turns, respect other drivers at all times and keep full control of my vehicle. I would agree someone who is speeding who clearly does not have the confidence or knowledge to maintain control at such speeds could be considered a reckless driver or just inexperienced, there is only one way to learn your own limitations and that is to find out the hard way. again, there are multiple scenarios with multiple outcomes, someone who is overtaking a traffic jam on the grass, at speed, is dangerous, but someone who either is avoiding an accident or got pushed off the road and is continuing off-road, you consider that “reckless”? The thing is, saying, oh “ this is reckless” is just a cop out, just because YOU won’t do it or don’t feel comfortable in that situation, doesn’t make it reckless, I stand by the rule that if the traffic approaching the opposite direction has to either move over or slam the brakes, then it’s dangerous, but if the pass is made without such actions, then it’s safe, what makes overtaking harder is that most drivers don’t respect the overtaking party, for example, if I’m going slow due to load weight or because I want to just cruise, yet someone wants to pass, I’ll look in my passenger mirror (because I only drive RHD) and if I see them passing, I will move over, let off the throttle and give them enough room to safely without causing a wreck or anyone to have to swerve. why should people be singled out just because they don’t use a wheel or a perfectly setup controller? Don’t you think that’s being unfair to people? sure they could drive slow, but then there chances of being rammed by an impatient *bleep* goes up, it’s almost as bad as saying, oh if you want to learn how to drive properly in MP, play SP for a year first or spend money you may not have on a wheel so that you can “control your vehicle”, I know a lot of really good drivers in TMP who drive fast AND use a keyboard and mouse to drive. I knew you would bring up “brake lights” as an excuse, someone can still desync while their brake lights are on, you should know that, right? besides, as a respectful driver, if someone is overtaking you, the courteous thing to do is to back off and give both them and you enough room to avoid and issues that can arise. Now, I’m not saying that every overtaking vehicle is without fault or has no malicious intent, there are quite a few people who enjoy brake checking people for no reason, I’m just saying that saying that the majority of times are cases of reckless behaviours is a bad viewpoint to have. The thing is, yes there are rules in TMP, everyone knows that, in fact the VAST majority of people follow said rules to the best of their abilities, not everyone is perfect or has reflexes that are nano second fast, accidents do happen, you can’t turn around and say that every single incident that happens deserves a ban, not only is that unfair on other players, but it’s not fair on the staff who have to sift through the torrent of reports and decide what reports are genuine cases of people ignoring rules and what’s just a literal accident, because at the end of the day, accidents DO happen. The thing is, that’s what TMP is, a GAME, people should NOT have to be carbon copies of the person next to them, they SHOULD be allowed to do what they want, how they want, yes there are rules, but those rules do not dictate that every player must do an exact thing in an exact way, no ifs, ands or buts, it’s one way or perms ban, multiplayer means multiple players, meaning multiple ways to approach a situation, as long as said method works and doesn’t break the actual rules, it’s allowed, whether you, as a driver with a different mindset, feel it’s the totally wrong way to do something, that’s the beauty of a multiplayer.

Well seeing as I only started playing TMP again in late March after 2 years away due to illness, that would put it way sooner and unless someone has the exact name you have, it’s most likely you, to answer your torrent of questions, you hit 1 person who was turning into the fuel station, both parties at fault, no one “hit your truck” seeing as I was the truck behind you and would rather put my vehicle in a ditch or guardrail than hit someone else, your speed was slow, I clocked you at a blistering 37MPH. The thing is, someone who is “speeding” in your mind is NOT recklessly driving, you can argue black is blue, but it’s just a game, if someone wants to do 70MPH everywhere, let them, If someone wants to do 37MPH everywhere, let them, to be fair, what you are calling “reckless driving” to me at least, doesn’t mean it at all, so what if someone’s driving on the grass, as long as they don’t fly out into traffic, it’s fair game, if someone passes with oncoming traffic, so what, sometimes with how traffic can pop in super close to you, it’s easy to go for an overtaking and be caught unawares, so what if someone is “invading” the other lane, perhaps they can’t afford a £1000 steering wheel setup and so have to use keyboard steering to drive. That’s the thing, there are more than one answer to every scenario, it’s just laziness to label someone doing and action as a “reckless” driver, but in reality there could be very simple explanations to the situation. Have you ever ever considered that a player “stopping dead” might simply be desync between yourself and them? On their screen they may have cleared you by miles, but on your screen they are 3 inches in front of you. Yes I agree that there are malicious people out there, but at the same time, there are shy people, who want to avoid verbal conflict so F7 to avoid conflict, there’s people who don’t want to have a verbal chat while potentially being banned for blocking, again there are more than 1 answer to said circumstance. At the the same time though, yes it’s a multiplayer, that means multiple people, multiple personalities, multiple ideas about right and wrong, so trying to tar everyone to the same brush and saying that oh, because someone didn’t do the exact same thing that I would do in that situation, they must be a trolling, malicious person, is like saying anyone who wants to play as if 30MPH in a 50MPH zone is a disgraceful, ungrateful and dangerous person. Its the age age old thing, those who want to play like it’s an RP 1:1 ratio world telling anyone who doesn’t want to do what they do, to go and play on SP, to people like that I say, stop being selfish, share the road with your fellow trucker whether they share your driving style or not, it’s only a multiplayer GAME after all.

That’s the thing, it’s made a difference to YOUR game experience, that doesn’t mean that it’s made an impact on the other 6000+ players who are averagely online during the day, for sample, I used to drive from St Petersburg to somewhere in northern Germany, a trip of around 1000-1300 miles, maybe more depending on the destination, yet I never got trolled, rammed or had any run-ins with people that I felt deserved to be reported, now, as soon as I enter northern Poland and track West into Germany, I’ve had many run-ins recently with trolls and other such undesirable people, so from my perspective, the changes have had a more negative effect, especially when none of the changes focused on the real issues in TMP. The thing is, just because someone hits you, doesn’t mean they had any malicious intent, before the changes, I actually followed you down C-D and to be honest, your latency was getting quite bad, so from my perspective, reporting someone when you have the attitude of “oh they touched my truck, that’s punishable by death” isn’t really a good attitude to have, mistakes happen, whether you like it or not, we are all human, we are not perfect by any means, I only report people if I can clearly see malicious intent, if it’s by accident, whether by lag, bad timing or just having not enough room to stop, then I don’t see why someone should be punished for it, at the end of the day it’s just a game, a load of code, it’s not real life. The thing is though, reckless driving is subject to personal opinion or by laws that are relevant within your country, so something that you see as reckless driving, to someone else, is not. So saying someone is recklessly driving is not specific nor really reliable, I mean, you can break down reckless driving into many, many factors and behavioural traits, the fact of the matter is, those 2 words are just a cop out to say that in your opinion, someone’s driving doesn’t meet your specifications.

The thing is, it makes no difference, a more significant difference would be if your reports went to 0 verses x number over y distance. To be honest, if you report for people “harming” your vehicle, well that’s an issue, but each to their own. from my point of view things are worse than before, you feel it’s better, different play styles equal different opinions, you drive at 55MPH on super long journeys which have a higher chance of being damaged, whereas I drive at 60+MPH with shorter journeys that mean I average less damage per day. at the end of the day, there are many ways TMP can be made better and still be fun for EVERY player, not just the “sim” players.

@FernandoCR [ESP] I know trolls are everywhere, I play games everyday, I’ve played TMP for a long time so, yes trolls are everywhere, the thing that I said was that this update has accelerated the effects of trolls and made people more brazen to troll. Number of reports sent by 1 user doesn’t make a difference in my opinion, especially between just 2 journeys, it’s subject to time of day, server, route, traffic population and the general mood of said user. So just because you sent 1 less report in a journey that’s of similar length, doesn’t show any significant change, if you had sent only 1 report after driving the same route multiple times before and after the update, then your claims would be more valid. I too have been avoiding C-D and surrounding areas more often, hence why my trip from Helsinki to Southampton was via the Scandinavian route to Grimsby/hull then south through England, yet get trolled more times driving this way than driving through German and France at the same time of day. I will strongly disagree with you based upon my own person experiences, I’ve seen more crashes either cause by people not paying attention to their mirrors and pulling out in front of people or by overtaking and being stuck in oncoming lanes because the other truck sped up to the limiter, yes, C-D tends to look quieter and less congested at the same times it used to be, but the number of crashes and hold ups have increase, what’s worse is that areas where you knew it was relatively safe to drive without the threat of being rammed or blocked are no longer a thing since the update. I would also also disagree that a 30MPH speed difference does NOT make avoiding wrecks and bad drivers easier, it’s the same tarmac, with the same bad driving with, at least for me, similar driving speed, so seeing and avoiding times are identical, yes if you are doing WoT jobs then doing 56MPH is going to let you have more time to react, but for someone who’s old cruise speed on most roads was between 60 and 70MPH anyway, it makes 0 difference, especially with the same road conditions and traffic behaviours. i stand by what I said, dropping the speed limits hasn’t fix the issues with TMP and the reasons why so many reports are made, all it’s done is enhance the effects and coloured the views of a lot of the community, with a lot of people feeling that essentially, TMP has “dropped the ball” when it comes to making TMP a fair place to be. Like I said, if the most common actions done by trolls, intentionally ramming, brake checking, blocking and hacking are given stronger punishments AND are dealt with in a shorter time frame, then driving in TMP wont be as bad, especially on ETS2. For me, ATS has become my go to game for driving solo in MP because it’s more fun, you have a speed limit of 80MPH which makes doing 2000mile journeys easier, there are less trolls and if you go to the logging trail near Bellingham, Washington, you’ll see a lot of people in one place at peak times.

Well after being trolled almost 3 times during a 1200 mile trip from Helsinki to Southampton, I can conclude that the speed limits have not made a difference, in fact, they’ve enhanced the effects of trolls and bad drivers, and that is the big issue, speed isn’t the problem, it’s the way people drive, the way people act, if it’s not someone trolling by weaving back and forth than slamming on the anchors for no reason (and before anyone says, oh that’s just lag, I would agree if I didn’t see their brake lights come on and their truck almost do a stoppie with how hard they hit the brakes), then you get people who seem to act as if mirrors are an optional extra that’s not required and so change lanes or pull out off the hard shoulder without even bothering to check for traffic. like many, after a few runs with the speed limiters, I’ve gotten used to it and have to cater trips more for the time I have than the other way around, but the experience isn’t fun when you could be in the middle of nowhere with low traffic and come across trolls wanting to disrupt things for “fun” then when you report them, you may as well buy a lottery ticket than have any hope of justice being served. This is is why I fear that TMP have dropped the ball when it comes to “the road to simulation” because while slowing people down things traffic out more meaning less likelihood of tailbacks that stretch halfway between cities, but the downside is, is that there is far more incidents involving trolling or poor decision making, thus meaning the number of reports gets bigger and bigger and the number of acted upon reports gets smaller. The simple solution is to take the most common and serious issues and make those issues have much stricter rules and punishments as well as a high priority to get trouble makers that ruin the game off the roads, I mean, I’m fine with dealing with “idiots” they are the ones that make driving in TMP hilarious, but those who’s soul objective is to ram, hack, glitch or block should be dealt with swiftly.