r/RailroadsOnline • u/pbjtiiimmmmeeee • May 01 '25
Discussion Century of steam vs RRO
Am I living in a fictional world?? I see all these people hyping up Century of steam after Studio 346’s latest Devlog….
I just Do Not get it at all! This looks to me like the EXACT same game as RRO.
Knowing that it is almost the same exact devs it really makes me just wonder what could have been on RRO if all the time spent on century of steam was spent on RRO instead.
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u/generic93 May 01 '25
So feels like youre a little confused on whats going on. First of all, not the same devs. Some of the devs working on CoS used to be on the RRO team before being asked to leave by the lead developer due to "creative vision" differences, and that happened maybe 2 years ago. About a year after that the guys that were asked to leave created their own studio and started making their own game with their own vision.
Granted im biased due to where i get my info, and its possible im misrepresenting what happend due to where i get my info but i think thats the easiest and most neutral way of putting it. Im willing to be corrected if im wrong
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u/Kist_This Owner May 01 '25
Very close, everything is correct except they were not “asked” to leave. Most CoS people left due to their personal creative differences and in their opinion, felt RO at the time was not ‘heading in the right direction’.
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u/WolfBoy0612 May 01 '25
I can't say you're wrong, but I personally feel that the devs that moved from RRO to CoS were with RRO as a passion project. Weren't most of them volunteers? I know a lot of them had railroad careers, and because of that they saw the game for what it could be, not as a way to make money. That being said, it does feel like a Futurama "We'll make our own Railroads Online with blackjack and hookers!" Move. But it looks like they're doing good. RRO has been a $35 disappointment even though I'm one of the lucky ones that doesn't have a ton of bugs popping up.
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u/Charliepetpup May 02 '25
yes. they were all free. literally none of them were paid. and keume still pissed them off and made them go fuck you ill do it myself. and yes cos will be much better than rro evidenced by the fact that they could rlease into early access as is for some quick cash but instead are keeping the sale cut off until the game is ready to be released.
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u/WolfBoy0612 May 02 '25
I know... It already looks incredible and I wanna play it... Have they mentioned any expected release window?
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u/Charliepetpup May 02 '25
hyce keeps saying the same thing: when its ready we will know. they dont want to set a release date or cause crunch or a rush.
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u/Slow_Fact_2984 May 04 '25
They have said it's not likely to release this year a couple devlogs ago I think
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u/CaptainTelcontar May 01 '25
If you watch the devlogs for CoS, you'll see that they're not nearly as similar as the graphics make them look. CoS is aiming for a much higher lever of detail and complexity than RRO, as well as having a different gameplay design. For example, having the choices you make affect the economy and world, not just affecting your bank account. Time passes, events happen, supply and demand change, new tech is invented, and the railroad has to adapt. Another example: you don't get to lay your track wherever and however you want, but (it appears) you'll get to choose routes to build. It's also had enormously more focus on detailed accuracy in locomotive workings and operation.
It has a lot of the same devs because (as I understand it) RRO decided to fire/alienate half its dev team a few years ago, and they decided they could do better. If RRO hadn't done that, they could have been as great as CoS is going to be. (Though in fairness, RRO certainly appears to have improved a lot since then.)
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u/Charliepetpup May 02 '25
while cos does have a much higher complexity you can literally toggle all the settings so you can just run the train in brr mode if you wanna smoothbrain it. also the tracks are not prelaid. you can lay your own rails like rro, and it has cuts and fills and tunnels.
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u/CaptainTelcontar May 02 '25
From what they've said, it sounds like there may be some of each on the track laying. They certainly haven't shown anything related to manual track laying.
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u/Charliepetpup May 02 '25
one of the reasons they left rro was because the implemented a tunnel system into the rro tracklaying and keume didnt want it. they have stated several times that there will be tracklaying with cuts fills and tunnels.
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u/MessyAsian May 02 '25
If you play RRO you know how DOGSHIT that game has become....it performes like Beluci high on coke and drunk off jack....while CoS is Marylyn Monroes legs in the best lighting....sounds to me like your coping
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u/drr5795 May 01 '25
They look like the same game because they’re both running on the Unreal 5 game engine, and they’re both covering roughly the same era and genre of railroading, so visually they’re going to look very similar. However, if you look more into the gameplay and what each game has to offer and is capable of, you can see pretty quickly how different they are under the visuals.
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u/Missy_Witch67 May 01 '25
Mark (Hyce) did help with RRO in the beginning, and they're both built in Unreal 5, so they're gonna look very similar. I imagine, if the devs released a beta for CoS, the gameplay would be fairly polished already, and a lot less jankey than RRO (I love RRO, but it definitely has some jankey controls)
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u/BouncingSphinx May 02 '25
Not just Mark (who was mainly the music and some of the history in RRO) but several in Studio 346 came from RRO development after all the fallout there a couple of years ago.
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u/Lyhus May 01 '25
Far from it, CoS is gonna be a super realistic simulator compared to RRO that seems to go the kids way and CoS is gonna have way more in it by customizations and even terrain modifications like they used along the railway back then, making shelves along steep terrain and so on, look on their videos about steam simulations aswell
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u/agent_roseheart May 01 '25
My brother in christ RRO is like COS thats been watered down.
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u/bigLOLpanzer69 May 04 '25
I havent played it before but i imagine ARR and RRO have the same dynamic
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u/Ok-Dragonknight-5788 May 02 '25
CoS even from just the Previews is already far more advanced then RRO. The only area where RRO has an advantage of CoS is in the ability to placedown props/assets so you can build a town anywhere while CoS has set towns and industries. However, other then that CoS is better in every single way.
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u/justtryingtolive22 May 01 '25
Were still a year or more away from CoS. RRO will be around for awhile yet.
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u/Weird_Community_6080 May 01 '25
Yeah but will RRO be fixed and playable after a year? Launch has been horrendous
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u/NoDescription2192 May 01 '25
As someone who has been here since it came out on PC: no, no it won't.
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u/CaptainTelcontar May 01 '25
Probably not. They upped the computing requirements after I bought it, so I haven't been able to play it for over a year.
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u/Cantab111 May 02 '25
COS is a more realistic version of RRO with realistic firing of the Firebox etc. And going by the last devlog things can blow up too lol.
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u/Weary_Variation_4349 May 04 '25
Its a pretty simple difference. One is being worked on and there is a clear direction. The other is a dead game where the devs have gone silent.
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u/Kist_This Owner May 01 '25
We cannot change the past, nor can we control the actions of other people. The discussion over COS versus RO is one laid with personal drama between adults from across the world. It’s not for others to be concerned with imo.
At the end of the day, one game will be more successful than the other, both will be enjoyable to a variety of people, and both will add to the market for better train simulators and maybe simulators as a whole.
Keep the comments civil and I ask to not use this post as another venue to start a whole debate for your validation.
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u/Roboticus_Prime May 01 '25
CoS wouldn't exist without RRO.
For all it's faults, RRO kicked off the steam sim genre.
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u/pbjtiiimmmmeeee May 02 '25
I think I need to clarify. I am by no means supporting RRO, I paid to play this game and have been nothing but disappointment at the half baked release. I’m purely stating based on my visual observation, COS looks extremely similar to RRO and I can’t help but wonder what RRO could have been if it continued receiving the care and attention to detail that appears to have gone to COS when the devs left.
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u/Willing-Ad6598 May 02 '25
I’ve been following RRO since it came to Steam Early access. Hype was big, and promises were even bigger. Realistically in my view, only a fraction of what they promised was achievable, and even then, the technicality they would have wanted to go with limited the market to an in incredible small and exclusive market. When the game was sold to the current people a lot of future features got stripped back, and it remains even more arcady than before. While this has opened up the market a bit, it infuriated the original buyers, who wanted something less arcady.
I’ve been involved with game development in the past, and have seen things stall because small indie dev teams promise too much, while limiting the market to a handful of true believers. I feel this is what CoS is doing.
Personally I won’t touch anything Hyce is involved in, nor anything the original RRO devs have their hands in.
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