Greetings Truckers,
Several years ago, we received feedback about the state of the city of Duisburg. Some veteran players may remember the permanent traffic congestion, which mainly formed around the entrance and exit of the service station. Upon review, we found that the default city, as designed by SCS Software, was simply not suitable for a multiplayer environment due to the high amount of traffic that constantly flows through the city. Back in early 2021, we attempted to solve this problem by making a few small map edits: we moved the entrance and exit of the service station to a road that nobody used at the time, created a bigger fuel station just outside of the city, and added traffic lights to regulate the frequently used road intersection at the eastern side of the city – which leads up to the road between Duisburg and Calais. While these map edits did have some positive effects, it did not resolve the traffic flow issues inside the city. In fact, it had moved the issues to a different hotspot rather than actually fixing them. In order to temporarily eliminate the issues, we considered it best to introduce a no-collision zone for the entire city to both improve the user experience and remove the strain it had on our Game Moderation team. Regardless of how much effort our Game Moderators would put into moderating that area, the user activity was simply too high for the design of the area.
We very much realize that introducing a no-collision zone is and was far from an acceptable solution and we have read all your feedback throughout the years, such as on the forum as well as in the most recent community survey. At the time that the no-collision zone was introduced, it was clear that the no-collision zone would not be a permanent solution and that we had to look for something else to address the issue. Shortly after it was decided that our Add-On team would redesign the entirety of Duisburg city to make it suitable for multiplayer use. The process of the redesign was initially supposed to take a few months at most, but it is now clear that this was far too optimistic. Apart from the fact that our Add-On team is relatively small and that our talented members may leave at any time for various reasons, our Add-On team is also very much involved in higher priority projects, such as official events with unique map modifications. Moreover, this project was not simply about changing a part of the city, instead, it was about completely rebuilding the city and its surrounding road network from scratch, with various practical and technical challenges to overcome. All in all, the planning, execution, and testing all took much longer than expected and we sincerely apologize for how long this all eventually took and the lack of action and communication throughout the process. This has certainly been a learning experience for us, both for how we internally deal with complex projects as well as how we should communicate such changes with you.
On the bright side, we can finally announce that we have created the new city of Duisburg and its surrounding areas. As promised, the no-collision zone will be removed. In order to ensure a better traffic flow, all traffic entering the city will come in from the northeast and exit to the south. Speaking of the south, we have created a convenient fuel, service, and parking area for you to enjoy. In addition to a whole new city, we have also created a whole new road network with many new highway interchanges and overpasses. We hope the new city will relieve traffic stress on the area and provide a much needed facelift to the area to bring it up to modern standards. We would love to hear your feedback – both positive and negative – and we can’t wait to see you out on the road!
-The Add-On Team