The inevitable Poll....

[The General]

This is my second Poll, the first one being the call for SH5 to be set in the Cold-War Era.

Yesterday's terffic news about the Patch 1.4/Add-on is still sinking in among the Subsim Community and I think it will usher in a new-age of online Subsimming. Why? Because this will be the first time that there will be a combined PTO/ATO, thus making the virtual WWII arena actually cover the oceans of the 'whole' world and making my beloved Cold-War era a possiblity in the future (with the help of a very skilled Modding community, you know who you are:up: ).

This is a very wise move on Ubisoft's behalf, because MMORPG's are the future of gaming and by laying the groundwork now, Ubisoft has put itself in a strong position to turn the Silent Hunter series into one of the best online gaming experiences. I just wonder what you guys thought such a revolutionary step forward was worth? So, down to brass tacks gentlemen...

[SteamWake]

This is a very wise move on Ubisoft's behalf, because MMORPG's are the future of gaming ...

Thats one of the funniest things Ive read in quite some time.

This comming from someone that plays MMORPG's.

[GT182]

I wouldn't pay them one red cent. After putting out a broken sim that's still broken, they owe us to make it right. Patch and addon together might make up for that only "if" they fix everything. But only when and "if" it's made official by Ubi will I believe it. Someone could be blowing us one big cloud of smoke just to stir the pot. It's happened before with Ubi on many of their games. Lets hope it's not happening again but be prepared just in case.

[nikimcbee]

I would like to hear ubi's reason for why SH4 turned out the way it did.:roll:

[Sailor Steve]

Point that thing somewhere else.

[Rockin Robbins]

There are no major pieces of software without bugs, be they games or business software. Demanding software without bugs is the same thing as saying you don't want any more software. Or hardware either! Remember Intel's Pentium floating point bug? Now Microsloth Excel 2007 says 13*5041.15384615385 = 100,000. Folks you are demanding a world that doesn't exist, never existed and never will exist.

Pioneers get all the arrows. They also pay top yen for the latest, trendiest stuff. And they get bragging rights: "I just bought the new Excel 2007 and now I know that 13*5041.15384615385 = 100,000. Bet YOU didn't know that!" (your calculator doesn't show that? That's because it's OBSOLETE!!!:up:) But picking arrows out of your keister is part of the thrill of being a pioneer, whether you're buying the latest graphics card, CPU, software, automobile, wireless router, hey, I could continue for hours. If you don't enjoy paying extra to be someone's beta tester, then QUIT BEING A PIONEER!!!!! Be politely quiet, buy proven products that aren't really that much worse than the bleeding edge anyway and save a bundle of cash!!!

But mostly, quit complaining about the predictable results of irrational behavior. Thank God for irrational people who MUST have the latest and greatest. Thank God for people with more money than sense because they finance the progress that the rest of us boring people enjoy. I'll hang back with my AMD Athlon 3700+, socket 939 motherboard, SLi'd EGA 7600GT graphics cards and a cheap copy of SH4 that runs great and you know what? I'm happy as can be! I have nothing to brag about, but I sleep good and I don't owe anybody.

It just seems like some lose sight of the fact that we have the two best submarine simulators available to civilians on the planet and if we spent full price we have invested less than $100! Figure that per hour compared to the cost of a movie, or a good dinner, or killing yourself with tobacco. We've got it good!:sunny:

PENALTY: EXCESSIVE USE OF EXCLAMATION POINTS. SEND HIM TO THE BRIG. ARRRRRR.

[Q3ark]

Rockin Robbins. What can i say but, good post man stick it to em man:arrgh!:

[joea]

I wouldn't pay them one red cent. After putting out a broken sim that's still broken, they owe us to make it right. Patch and addon together might make up for that only "if" they fix everything. But only when and "if" it's made official by Ubi will I believe it. Someone could be blowing us one big cloud of smoke just to stir the pot. It's happened before with Ubi on many of their games. Lets hope it's not happening again but be prepared just in case.

After 3 patches what's still broken? I don't mean stuff like campaign layers and units that can be handled by modders who have the time to do it right for history buffs. :hmm:

[The General]

This is a very wise move on Ubisoft's behalf, because MMORPG's are the future of gaming ...

Thats one of the funniest things Ive read in quite some time.

This comming from someone that plays MMORPG's.Well, you need to get out more.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah, we computer voting here and there's no way to cheat? Where's the fun in that?:rotfl:I want to stuff the ballot box.

I agree with you that the next place to go is a subscription based online Silent Hunter series. All ships and submarines could have real crews, no more faulty AI, there would be none. We'd quickly find that people are even more faulty than faulty AI.:up: If Silent Hunter is to evolve it has to play on its strengths, and that has been WWII. A huge knowledge base has been built up, a lot of mistakes made and corrected. The war was long enough ago for hostilities to dissipate but recent enough that the technology is still interesting. I just can't see Ubi throwing all that experience down the drain to do a cold war sim.

If that's out, online is the new theater of war. Imagine voice communication between the captain and the torpedo room. The captain actually says "fire one" and the torpedoman actually fires the torpedo. (they actually did the firing, right? I'm asking here). Firing teams could work just like the real submarine. The merchies would have real crews, as would any escorts. The convoy would have orders to be in a certain port on a certain date with no set course or speed. Can you imagine the possibilities? This truly is the best way to revolutionize the subsim genre.

[PaulPosition]

...
If that's out, online is the new theater of war. Imagine voice communication between the captain and the torpedo room. The captain actually says "fire one" and the torpedoman actually fires the torpedo. (they actually did the firing, right? I'm asking here). Firing teams could work just like the real submarine. The merchies would have real crews, as would any escorts. The convoy would have orders to be in a certain port on a certain date with no set course or speed. Can you imagine the possibilities? This truly is the best way to revolutionize the subsim genre.
Are you serious?

I'd bet after an hour of fun watching seagulls on the deck or painting an other "from [insert sub's name] with love" on a torpedo in the torp room, everyone would sit in the kitchen playing cards and listening to the gramophone. I might as well stick to last.fm and partypoker.com ...

[leovampire]

But I do not play on line and to be honest I have over 100 PC games total and not a single one of them has gone on line other to add a patch or a download for them and I doubt I will ever go that route.

So if it still isn't a single player game as well as online I wouldn't bother to purchase it. I passed on more game's than I can think of because they were online only.

I am also willing to pay $70.00 U.S. for a game but I do expect it to function well out of the box without having to wait for a patch just to play it past a few missions or patrols.

And not have it function like a windows 95 arcade game where it dosn't touch the objects it is supose to interact with.

We have some great games right now that are being well moded so there is no need to rush things on a new vs and not have it function right from the start. Another word's UBISOFT let the Developers take their time with it and put the love into the game I know they would like to so that when it is released to the public they can get the praise they and you deserve and not the head ach's and problems and complaint's from the public.

[Rockin Robbins]

But I do not play on line and to be honest I have over 100 PC games total and not a single one of them has gone on line other to add a patch or a download for them and I doubt I will ever go that route.

So if it still isn't a single player game as well as online I wouldn't bother to purchase it. I passed on more game's than I can think of because they were online only.

I am also willing to pay $70.00 U.S. for a game but I do expect it to function well out of the box without having to wait for a patch just to play it past a few missions or patrols.

And not have it function like a windows 95 arcade game where it dosn't touch the objects it is supose to interact with.

And that's part of the reason to go with an online game. It doesn't compete with what's already out there, it doesn't keep newer and better versions of the single player games from being published. It is just a way to market some of that experience base in WWII sub simulators to bring in additional income. Just like SH4 is to SH3, it would compliment, not replace.

I'm not sure I like the spectre of all the GWXers (my personal heroes among the modding community, although I have to give your team and Ducimus functionally equal standing) abandoning SH3 for SH4's U-Boats, even if they made a spectacular Atlantic campaign. As much as I am almost exclusively playing SH4 for now, I have a real soft spot in my heart for SH3/GWX and can't imagine it being abandoned. Yes, it's a personal problem, I'm sure.:88)

[Gezoes]

... It just seems like some lose sight of the fact that we have the two best submarine simulators available to civilians on the planet and if we spent full price we have invested less than $100! Figure that per hour compared to the cost of a movie, or a good dinner, or killing yourself with tobacco. We've got it good!:sunny:
I appreciate the fact that these games/sims are even made... a lot! Getting a patch now and again doesn't really bother me. Sure, there should be more testing and less rushing. But being a captain that remembers, among a zillion others, Silent Service on the trusty old C64, things have come such a long way. So 20 or a bit more sounds fine to me.

What he said :up:

[STEED]

Please vote on my Poll! Ooh,er Missus!

Pay me £100 and you got my vote until then no. :p

[The General]

The cheque is in the Post. Good luck seeing that with the state of our Postal System. :rotfl:

[STEED]

The cheque is in the Post. Good luck seeing that with the state of our Postal System. :rotfl:

Royal Mail that bad, really? :hmm:

OK I may vote but I need a bit of a think and a nice cup of tea. :lol:

[Rockin Robbins]

Are you serious?

I'd bet after an hour of fun watching seagulls on the deck or painting an other "from [insert sub's name] with love" on a torpedo in the torp room, everyone would sit in the kitchen playing cards and listening to the gramophone. I might as well stick to last.fm and partypoker.com ...[/quote]

Don't bother me with the truth, my mind is made up!:rotfl:Sure, there are gameplay obstacles that need to be overcome, but there was a different set, just as formidable, in the single player game. The devs seem to have been able to get decent gameplay out of that. So don't count out a possible online game until you've seen it. Minimizing paint chipping, card playing, tatooing each other out of sheer boredom would have to be minimized as a condition of making the game consistently interesting enough to play. Maybe some type of auto TC could maximize time spent in actual life and death conflict. But sure, there's a lot of details to be worked out. If it was easy, it would already be out there.

[nematode]

Even if they'd fixed all the bugs we're still left with 2 full price Silent Hunter games that are essentially identical. Altho Oleg/IL2 proved it could be sold, I'm done with buying the same game a third time.

Until someone produces a subsim that's more than an incremental improvement over a 15 year old AoTD with new gfx, my entertainment $$$ are going elsewhere.

[The General]

I think a SilentHunter Online type game would have to be one player for each vessel. Players who want to go offline will either have the choice of docking at a friendly port (like the Space Stations in EVE Online), or just 'anchoring' their vessel wherever they wanna leave it. I get goosebumps just thinking about this stuff!

[longam]

Online simulation was great back in the falcon 4 days (excluding the CTD).

We always used voice communication, took off in a group and flew in formation. It was cool flying wing tip to wing tip with the occasional joker flipping his plane upside down over another. Then the waves of attack fighters would come in and we would call targets and chase them or long shot with a missile then rejoin group. When it came time for the ground attack it usually went to hell and most were killed or wounded. Flying back together was rare, and if you did land it was CTD, so u never went back up but we enjoyed it.

So online can be a great experience in the right conditions and with the right people and the right kind of game.

[Rockin Robbins]

I think a SilentHunter Online type game would have to be one player for each vessel. Players who want to go offline will either have the choice of docking at a friendly port (like the Space Stations in EVE Online), or just 'anchoring' their vessel wherever they wanna leave it. I get goosebumps just thinking about this stuff!
They also could replace players who logged out pretty instantly. Maybe the new player would have to observe for 5 minutes or so before he replaced the man on duty, just like in a real submarine. I'm sure that all the problems could be worked out. It would be boring to have more than one crewmember in a merchie. Maybe one person would control a fleet of merchies, who knows? But destroyers and subs, at least, would have multiple person crews because interpersonal interaction would be the hallmark of the online game. Too bad I don't have a clue how to make it work.

Isn't there an online game where each person takes a station in a WWII bomber and individuals fly the escort fighters? Seems to me that vacant positions there get automatically covered with AI. Lotsa copying of ideas that work there could be a real boost to making an online SH work.

[SteamWake]

How would you handle the vast expanses and time needed to get 'on station' ?

MMO's have portals and magic gates or 'fast travel' options like griffons or horses.

Eve had wormholes and warp drives.

I'm pretty sure these dont exist in the pacific theater.

SH4 already has a multiplayer aspect in it now and very very few have or tried to have used it.

Have you ever read the multiplayer section of the forums ? Not only is it so quiet over there you can hear a pin drop the vast majority of the posts read along the lines of "How do you make this damn thing work ?".

Oh and what about the 'leveling' aspect. This is a basic tool of all RPG's giving one a sense of accomplishment as their charecter advances and becomes more powerfull. SH4 scratched at this with its 'renown' system but a large percentage of the MMORPG society is going to want there glowing cloak of uberness to make there sub invisible when they want. Otherwise they are going to burn out quickly. A step up from an S boat is not going to cut it.

Is that something you want ?

[The General]

@SteamWake

Well, we're just hashing out some ideas here. Luckily, the distances involved in circum-navigating a virtual globe in real-time do not compare with the vastness of space. So 'Jump-gates' and the like are not necessary. The virtual globe doesn't have to be to scale remember, it could be 1/8th size or something. I think with enough players online, piloting planes aswell as Naval and Merchant vessels, there will be plenty to see and do. Like in Eve ,some people will just hang out and be sociable, others will be transporting troops and/or cargo, others will play purely a military role. We're just trying to establish if a WWII, Naval based MMORPG is feasible:hmm:, any suggestions are welcome.

As for player satisfaction from the acumulation of wealth or power, I'm not sure, but BF2 has a simple promotion system that's kinda fun, maybe something similar could work for this?

[FIREWALL]

Yeah, we computer voting here and there's no way to cheat? Where's the fun in that?:rotfl:I want to stuff the ballot box.

I agree with you that the next place to go is a subscription based online Silent Hunter series. All ships and submarines could have real crews, no more faulty AI, there would be none. We'd quickly find that people are even more faulty than faulty AI.:up: If Silent Hunter is to evolve it has to play on its strengths, and that has been WWII. A huge knowledge base has been built up, a lot of mistakes made and corrected. The war was long enough ago for hostilities to dissipate but recent enough that the technology is still interesting. I just can't see Ubi throwing all that experience down the drain to do a cold war sim.

If that's out, online is the new theater of war. Imagine voice communication between the captain and the torpedo room. The captain actually says "fire one" and the torpedoman actually fires the torpedo. (they actually did the firing, right? I'm asking here). Firing teams could work just like the real submarine. The merchies would have real crews, as would any escorts. The convoy would have orders to be in a certain port on a certain date with no set course or speed. Can you imagine the possibilities? This truly is the best way to revolutionize the subsim genre.

That sounds interesting EXCEPT everyone would want to be Captain.:arrgh!:

Where you gonna get a crew ?:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[Takeda Shingen]

That sounds interesting EXCEPT everyone would want to be Captain.:arrgh!:

Where you gonna get a crew ?:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

That's true. I don't know many people who would want to sit for three hours, pressing Ctrl+F4 repeatedly to simulate torpedo loading.

[Captain Vlad]

Could work like WWII Online is supposed to, I guess, with the subs being one-person runnable, but with 'multicrewing' available, where you can have one guy steering and doing torpedo solutions and another firing the deck gun and perhaps another manning the AA just in case there's planes about.

Generally though, I'd see an idea like this being 'one person, one sub'. If it's based on submarine warfare, though, it's gonna get boring real quick without real people running the ASW and such. If you really wanted a game like this, you'd probably have to sim destroyers, airplanes, and other platforms as well to keep in interesting. There's also the whole 'why are we sinking ships if it doesn't accomplish anything' factor, which means you need some way to win the war.

Perhaps take the WWII Online idea and instead of emphasizing land warfare, make the navy the king. Each side must advance by launching invasions (somewhat abstract to keep the emphasis on Naval stuff) of enemy islands from their own territory, and if you want to stay on the offensive, you have to keep your forward areas supplied in the face of all those rabid submariners.

When one side loses, the campaign restarts.

Oh and what about the 'leveling' aspect. This is a basic tool of all RPG's giving one a sense of accomplishment as their charecter advances and becomes more powerfull. SH4 scratched at this with its 'renown' system but a large percentage of the MMORPG society is going to want there glowing cloak of uberness to make there sub invisible when they want. Otherwise they are going to burn out quickly. A step up from an S boat is not going to cut it.

This is assuming we're talking about an RPG as opposed to a virtual battlefield kind of thing. As it happens though, the SH series already has upgradeable boats and crew, so that would work well as a way of improving.

Want a five-inch gun or new radar or an acoustic torpedo? Earn some renown. That's aside from the 'working for a better' boat idea, which would also be fun.

As a former EVE player, I can honestly say tinkering with my ship setups was one of my favorite aspects of the game. We could have something like that available as well...especially if we're talking about minute advantages, like a .25 knot speed advantage over a stock boat of the same class or what have you.

[JU_88]

Well I can think of one good reason why Silent hunter might never become a MMORPG (or even come close to resembling one) - time compression.
Who is going to play a silent hunter campaign online - in 1x TC?
I wish I had that kind of time on my hands ....

[Sailor Steve]

:rotfl:

"Tony, I just got online! Where are you?"
"Off the coast of Korea, stalking Japanese cruisers. You?"
"Two days out of Wilhelmshaven!"
"Dang! Guess we won't be playing together this month."

[JU_88]

:rotfl:

"Tony, I just got online! Where are you?"
"Off the coast of Korea, stalking Japanese cruisers. You?"
"Two days out of Wilhelmshaven!"
"Dang! Guess we won't be playing together this month."

Yep...you see the problem, LMAO :rotfl: