As of this posting, there are 892 posts on the MTH DCS forum and only 770 on the Lionel TMCC-Legacy fourm. I'm wondering why, even after all the new Legacy roll-out hoopla. Here are possible answers. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

1. There are more MTH DCS users
2. MTH DCS is more complex and requires more dialogue to make it work properly
3. The MTH DCS users are more serious hobbyists and tend to frequent this forum more than TMCC users.

Which reason is most likely and are there other reasons?

Here is the probable reasons...

TMCC was out way before OGR created the separate forums. Most of the issues were pretty much discussed and known about before then. Less dialog was needed at that time.

DCS came out and shortly there after OGR split the forums. In it's infancy DCS was new, a learning curve, and brought forth some issue that needed discussion. With upgrades and some unique challenges it created more dialog.

Legacy came out with some of it's own set of discussions and issues. It's still rather new and has not encounter all the possible issues. We are still learning and discovering.

The only possible listing you have is #2 but that to me is not enough IMO.

That's my take.

To add to what Marty said TMCC came out way before this entire forum even existed. The separate forums were created when DCS came out and things got a bit "testy" on the general forum.

Actually if you look at the number of posts the difference is more dramatic 9290 vs. 6861. You would have to do some study to find the root cause of the difference but here's a few points about the DCS "excess":
- Repetitions of Barry's guidelines for DCS layout wiring.
- Discussions about installing DCS upgrades (no analog to this for TMCC until Legacy came out.)
- Discussions of DCS mixed with TMCC (tend to happen there more than here IMO).

As Marty said your #2 is closest to truth.

From my very limited experience, I would agree with #2. I looked at both and went with the TMCC. I thought about Legacy, but decided to get it later on so my son and I can maybe use two controllers on one layout...
TMCC was so simple, my son and I were literally up and running in 5 minutes. We have been running trains and having fun since.

Why does it matter? The key point is that folks who have questions on either forum are getting answers and help and that is the most important issue here. chief

quote:

Originally posted by chief:
Why does it matter? The key point is that folks who have questions on either forum are getting answers and help and that is the most important issue here. chief

Having monitored the roll out of Legacy and the interest it generated over the past several months, I expected to see the TMCC/Legacy traffic catch up to the MTH DCS traffic. There appears to be a continuing lag despite this. I'm a curious person. Marketing, new technology, and human behavior are interesting topics to me.

good day all it may be that legacy is an extension of tmcc and those that only have tmcc equipment find the transition to the newer cab 2 easy, so therefore not as manny questions also were all waiting on the chip to fix base loss issues. dcs has had 2 software upgrades and most here have it as well and some have run into issues using it or have run into glitches so more questions so far on the how to fix this issue. so I agree with #2 of your post also. $oo

I agree that #2 is the reason, but thinking a little bit about COMPLEXITY, DCS has many more features than TMCC, and that generates a lot of the conversation. Additionally with Barry answering/addressing all the major questions as he has will also STIMULATE more posts.

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT putting down TMCC, but there are many more specific controls and options in DCS. What, 36 softkeys, I believe, and many of those have sub choices. Not just binary.

quote:

Originally posted by Don(Cerritos):
I agree that #2 is the reason, but thinking a little bit about COMPLEXITY, DCS has many more features than TMCC, and that generates a lot of the conversation. Additionally with Barry answering/addressing all the major questions as he has will also STIMULATE more posts.

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT putting down TMCC, but there are many more specific controls and options in DCS. What, 36 softkeys, I believe, and many of those have sub choices. Not just binary.

I would agree with that assessment. A lot of the features in DCS are handy, some just gimmicky. Sorta like the vibrating HH in Legacy. I like the gimmicky stuff. I wasn't keen on the vibrating HH but I think I'd miss it now.

One thing, that you mentioned soft keys on DCS is the latest MTH ad where it says DCS speaks English not ICONs. That one has me rolling on the floor. Can someone tell me what half those soft keys say? Not saying some of the icons are encyriptic until you know what they mean but some of those soft keys are pretty much Greek too.

If you are a Legacy man, WHO CARES?

I have nothing to complain about. Since I reprogramed the base correctly with the posted instructions here on this BB Marty's? I think? or Chris's? When Legacy is working perfectly there are no "Hidden" issues we need to learn as with DCS. Also Legacy is "Plug-n-Play" for most users. No special block wiring or track wiring to get it to work for most users with medium sized layouts. It took months to get my layout correctly wired so DCS would work well. Had I known then what I know now...

quote:

Originally posted by winky2:
If you are a Legacy man, WHO CARES?

I run both and love it!

quote:

Originally posted by gfmucci:
As of this posting, there are 892 posts on the MTH DCS forum and only 770 on the Lionel TMCC-Legacy fourm. I'm wondering why, even after all the new Legacy roll-out hoopla. Here are possible answers. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

1. There are more MTH DCS users
2. MTH DCS is more complex and requires more dialogue to make it work properly
3. The MTH DCS users are more serious hobbyists and tend to frequent this forum more than TMCC users.

Which reason is most likely and are there other reasons?

Gerry,

I think reason #2 is closest to the truth. Care was taken in the introduction of both TMCC and Legacy to make them work pretty much "out of the box". DCS has more features and a more rich user interface than TMCC (can't speak for Legacy), but under the covers it is more complex to implement and troubleshoot. Hence the additional traffic.

George

Here is a quick analysis for January 2008 (skewed by Legacy launch):

TMCC forum Totals
Topics 249
Posts 2042
Views 80934

DCS forum Totals
Topics 184
Posts 1700
Views 53475

Top 10 Thread Starters TMCC
$oo Line 11
big bob 9
Billman730 9
Will Allen III 8
cbojanower 7
MartyE 6
ny 6
Ted Bertiger 5
BAMABRAD 4
Gene 4

Top 10 Thread Starters DCS
SD60M 8
$oo Line 7
NASA Welding Engineer 6
fm592 5
galluch 5
GG-1 4877 5
cngw 4
quick 4
tumbleweed56 4
1020Brian 3

Top 10 Thread Finishers TMCC
by Billman730 15
by winrose46 15
by cbojanower 11
by Mark R 10
by MartyE 10
by Skeeter 7
by $oo Line 6
by Jim Katz 6
by ny 6
by Don Breslauer 5

Top 10 Thread Finishers DCS
by Barry Broskowitz 20
by RJR 18
by NASA Welding Engineer 14
by Jim Katz 7
by cngw 6
by dave hikel 6
by winrose46 6
by Marty W. 4
by $oo Line 3
by 1020Brian 3

Topics with Selected Keywords TMCC
Legacy 133
TMCC 48
Problem 15
Help 12
Upgrade 7
DCS 3
NY 2
How 2

Topics with Selected Keywords DCS
TMCC 14
Upgrade 13
Problem 13
Update 6
Barry 5
Help 4
Commandment 2
Lamp or Bulb 2
How 2

I selected the keywords to search in the two forums. A word frequency count in the topics would be better, but hey, I need a life. Note I did not look at individual posts - all I did was copy and paste from the topics screens into Excel.

quote:

One thing, that you mentioned soft keys on DCS is the latest MTH ad where it says DCS speaks English not ICONs. That one has me rolling on the floor. Can someone tell me what half those soft keys say? Not saying some of the icons are encyriptic until you know what they mean but some of those soft keys are pretty much Greek too.

Marty - My thoughts exactly! I have no idea of what those 3 letter acronyms mean at all...

I will tend to agree with #2

Bill

Lets face it that ad is funny. There are certainly at this point less "icons" to learn than the 3 letter "english" softkeys of DCS. I know there is a rhyme to it such as sxx is a sound key but come on... English?