What concerns you most about SHO?

[GoldenRivet]

Video game companies make games to generate revenue in order to create other titles and come out profitable just as any company or business should hope to do.

No matter what business you are in, you produce widgets, sell the widgets for a profit and hope to make more widgets for a greater profit.

Historically, as a video game company you either made competitive, insightful, thought provoking, cutting edge games... or you made total crap. Obviously those companies which made total crap didnt last long... and some of the game companies that made good games were purchased up by the buying power of companies that made *great* games.

of late, some video game companies have greatly modified their business strategy - that is to say that some companies stopped producing and selling widgets for a price and switched to producing widgets and making them available to consumers in such a way that you had to continuously pump money into the widget for it to keep working.

Picture 1980... atari makes pac man available in the home!

http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/pacman_tabletop.jpg
"Awesome, Thanks Atari!"


except in this alternate 1980 it wasnt on an atari, it was an affordable arcade console you have to put quarters in to play and every two weeks an atari rep comes to your home to collect the quarters....

http://goshycab.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/sad-kid.jpg
"I was going to buy more games with those quarters"



i was around in 1980

i was a kid in 1980

i played games in 1980

i know 1980

im here to tell you... that would have gone over like a fart in a crowded elevator

This business strategy however works well with some games: World of Warcraft has been a cash cow for about a decade. I've never played it myself, the medieval fantasy, ghouls and goblins, dungeons and dragons bit has never really been my thing, but it is popular enough with a large enough group of people that WOW continues to get away with charging a monthly fee for the game

a fee which my research indicates is about $15 per month

assuming you have been a hard core WOW player since 2005... that translates to a game which has cost you almost $1500 not including any money spent on expansion packs, initial install or hardware upgrades etc

obviously some games work well with this type of marketing

other games however... dont

I have been a hard core Microsoft Flight Simulator player since my early Tandy 1000 days way back in 1985.

http://newmutiny.healthhive.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Tandy_1000_SX_01.jpg
a bazillion times this computing power is in my jeans pocket now.


for over 20 years, the franchise has more or less defined PC flight simulation to a wide fan base made up of office chair novices to experienced real life airline pilots. The series helped inspire me to become an aviator in real life - not just on the PC.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.gadling.com/media/2011/03/alex-copy.jpg
"Ass, cash or gas... nobody rides for free ma'am"


When Microsoft decided to re-market Microsoft Flight Simulator as Microsoft Flight, a pay to expand / pay to play "game" - the 25 year run of what many consider to be the most successful flight simulation franchise in history - was over.

My fear is that the same may be true with our own beloved Silent Hunter Series.... which could put an undeserved black mark on the face of Submarine simulations as a whole.

Silent Hunter has perhaps been one of the most successful and longest running Sub Sim franchises available. Silent Hunter is now entering its sixth release title - Silent Hunter Online - which is thus far being received with mixed fanfare after Ubisofts failure to complete two back to back silent hunter titles leaving behind a jaded, unhappy and skeptical fan base for the latest entries of the series.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ejhj94BThl4/UMurix3mCGI/AAAAAAAAARM/DM4lFdCA3jw/s1600/muppet-hecklers.jpg
no caption required


In any game which spawns sequels, the subsequent releases in the series simply must offer more than prior releases in order to be successful.

at the time Silent Hunter III was announced, sub simmers have been interfacing with 2D gauge panels, disengaging atmosphere, a somewhat unattractive 3D environment and listening to the voices of our disembodied or invisible crewmen for decades. Part of what drove SHIII to the top of the subsim charts was simple... it changed everything.

literally.

a single 1 minute and 41 second video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DWhJtwg6dM) changed everything. It set expectations, high expectations. and to the pleasant surprise of subsimmers across the land... in mid march 2005 - those expectations were delivered upon by Ubisoft when the highest rated silent hunter in the history of the series hit shelves.

rich, good looking environment, 3D interactive crewmen, a mostly functional and fairly detailed 3D submarine interior not to mention the various playable u-boats... these were all the ingredients necessary to breathe new and vigorous life into the series. and it worked.

according to subsim.com
(http://www.subsim.com/ssr/ssr_history.html)
"March 2005 - Silent Hunter III is released to wide acclaim and praise. Subsim adds a new server to handle the increased traffic and mods."

http://www.in-ga.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/silent_hunter_online-neal_stevens.png

"Its true. Seriously... this is my serious face."

Though i do not have data immediately available to support this claim, i can certainly imagine that any data made available would indicate a major leap in new subsim.com forum members and additionally a dramatic increase in the number of individuals who play submarine simulations in the short time following the March 2005 release of silent hunter III.

unfortunately for the series, each of the following releases of Silent Hunter have seemed to be a step backwards from the glory of Silent Hunter III... a glory ubisoft has been thus far unable to reacquire.

Silent Hunter IV and V have both been good indicators that Ubisoft has been hearing the voices of the community... but not necessarily listening to the words.

Silent Hunter IV - we wanted fleet boats in the pacific, we got fleet boats in the pacific.

we also got a long list of bugs, a half finished game, a poor interface and an eventual shut off of support from ubisoft as their gamble appeared to be that the community would make Silent Hunter IV complete through mods. While many improvements have been made over the years, Silent Hunter IV never stepped out of the shadow of Silent Hunter III.

Silent Hunter V - players wanted a fully modeled interior, and more interactions with crew, a more believable 3D environment and more engaging campaign options... we got these things.

but we also got a severely limited number of playable boats by comparison to earlier releases, and the interactions with the crew were made through a very linear story line which developed at an agonizingly slow pace. The crew and u-boat "upgrades" and "special skills" were a poor joke. Instead of more realistic campaign options, we got a static capmaign that would be the same upon every replay of Silent Hunter V... and even the campaign failed to offer the player the full 1939-1945 war years.

Wolfpacks... which the community had been longing for since before Silent Hunter III were still ominously missing.

http://bbsimg.ngfiles.com/1/16334000/ngbbs482e264d06212.jpg
"Wolfpacks?.... i know nothing! nothing!"


major steps backwards.

Silent Hunter Online is an ever growing speck on the horizon visible from the conning towers of roughly 10,000 subsim.com members daily, many of whom are still frustrated by their experiences of SH IV and V. Needless to say, Silent Hunter Online is under the microscope here and elsewhere.

Simply based on what we already know, some assumptions are fair to make at this point in time.

Silent Hunter Online will be free to play

this unfortunately means it will be pay to win

very very likely a fledgling U-boat skipper will start out with a Type II or an early Type VII U-boat free of charge.

want a Type VIIC/41 or better flack or better batteries? Want a Type IX boat or a better conning tower emblem?

thats fine and well but the odds are at least some of these options will require a paid subscription or a credit card, simply meaning that crew skill upgrade costs you real tangible money.

we can also make the assumption that Silent Hunter Online will be mostly a 2D interface based on screenshots and video we have observed.

after nearly 10 years of 3D explorable interiors, a 2D interface could be a massive step in the wrong direction for the series.

finally, aside from being pay to win and aside from being a huge step back in the interface department... Silent Hunter online is a browser game, much to the chagrin of the hard core elite.

enough hell was raised over Silent Hunter 5 requiring a connection to play, one would only speculate that Ubisoft would have figured out the community has a problem with being online to play its games.

one good thing i can see about the browser format... almost no matter what your laptop or PC physical specs are, supposedly if its got an internet connection Silent Hunter online will probably be playable. this translates to a great deal of portability which gamers like myself who travel almost constantly will appreciate.

will silent hunter online be successful?

or is will ubisoft prove itself insane by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?




tell us... what concerns you most about SHO?

[Sailor Steve]

Nothing.

Nothing concerns me about it.

If I try it and it's as un-simlike as it looks like it's going to be, then I haven't lost anything except an hour of two of my time.

If it's fun enough to play, I'll play it.

It doesn't look like it's going to be anything like Rise Of Flight, which looks like a dedicated simulator. For that I'll gladly pay money for more well-simulated planes.

If it was as much a simulator as SH3, with pay-do-download new stuff, I'd go for it. It doesn't look like that's going to be the case, but I'll give it a shot, just in case.

No concerns at all.

[StarTrekMike]

That was a really well written post, it really does reflect many of my feelings on the subject, I think the Microsoft flight reference is apt and I compare SHO and MS Flight often because they share many (rather unfortunate) qualities.

My concern is that this is just Ubisoft's way of saying "This is the way it is going to be from here on out!" I mean, it is not hard to see that they have taken many steps away from the simulator genre and one only needs to look at how they handled the release of IL-2 Cliffs of Dover and pretty much any Silent Hunter since SHIII to see how little they actually care about the simulator audience.

I have had many discussions with folks I know about why simulators went from being one of the sure bets in the PC gaming market to something of a extreme fringe genre where only the most dedicated stick around and we only get a slow trickle of new blood.

The answer is simple, we as simmers are much more aware of our wants and needs than the average gamer, we have years of reading books, looking at data and playing prior simulators so we already know what we want and what we expect, companies like Ubisoft don't want to deal with those kinds of expectations because they require a investment of time and money that they are simply not willing to put forth.

Now, the interesting question is how did it get that way? How did sims go from one of the more popular gaming genre's to one of the least in such a short time? (compare sim production from 1997 to about 2001 and you will see what I mean.)

The answer lies with the publishers, guys like EA (who once controlled the mighty Jane's combat simulation's), Activision and Ubisoft (who owns Silent Hunter, the Lock-on name and a few others) have worked very hard to convince the public that specific genre's are dead (sims being one of them) and they do that because they want two things.

1.) Customers that are younger and more receptive to newer practices like DLC, the free to play concept, MMO social features and invasive DRM practices, us older gamers are not as keen to jump on those particular industry buzzword wagon.

2.) Genre's like the tactical shooter (the original Rainbow six, Ghost recon), the simulator and others have reached a very high level of sophistication and did so rather early, these publishers don't want to invest that much money and time into pleasing the fans of those early games because they can't exploit them like they do with more modern properties or even modern interpretations of games like Rainbow six or Ghost recon (both pale shadows of what they once were.)

Big publishers don't want us around anymore, they tell us "not everyone has time for those sims, we need to try and grab a wider audience that might not care about historical or technical accuracy) without even looking at the fact that simulators are very much a "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing.

Simulators are not dying because nobody wants them, they are dying because these big publishers don't want to make them, not because they are too expensive but because the market already knows what it wants, we know what kind of quality we expect and many of us won't settle for anything less than that.

Many call us stubborn but in reality, we are some of the best consumers in the gaming industry, we don't just buy everything just because, we actually think about our purchases and tend to stick with them longer (which brings me to my final point.)

Guys like EA, Activision and Ubisoft hate the idea of a title that lasts more than a fiscal year, they want to put out sequel after sequel and only add small additions to each, it is good business but bad for the overall gaming market because games are no longer designed to have any sort of longevity, sims tend to gather loyal fanbases that are hesitant to move on to something new if they feel the current version works just fine.

It is a sad state of affairs that is only made worse when companies like Ubisoft sit on properties like Silent Hunter and don't just auction them to whoever might be willing to give it a fair shake, they did the same with Lock-on and yet Eagle Dynamics still said what essentially amounts to a "screw you!" and released a followup called Flaming cliffs (though you still need the original Lock-on disc, thanks Ubisoft...)

Companies like 777 (and the new 777/1C merger), Eagle Dynamics, Laminar research, Chris Roberts with his Star Citizen project and even Fingers crossed interactive (Scott Juliano) with his Rogue system project are proving that the demand for simulators of all types is still high, not in the way the demand for the next Call of duty is high but still enough for publishers to take notice.

In a way, I am glad that big publishers leave sims to smaller, more talented, dedicated and more ethical privately owned developers, they have proved that customer satisfaction is not as important to them as their overall sales.

Still, it would be nice if we could have a larger audience for sims, at least enough to lower prices on peripherals and bolster the sizes of the teams working on sims currently.

Silent Hunter online is simply a symptom of a larger disease and other great franchises have been tainted by it also, just take a look at Mechwarrior online and Microsoft Flight (thankfully a failure).

[GoldenRivet]

Nothing.

Nothing concerns me about it.

If I try it and it's as un-simlike as it looks like it's going to be, then I haven't lost anything except an hour of two of my time.

I have a tendency to agree with you here Steve.

But what if you play it and you find it somewhat enjoyable? enjoyable enough to pay the umpteen dollars a month to play it.

Assume now that you play it with the longevity by which you have enjoyed Silent Hunter III for example

does the gaming experience you had with Silent Hunter Online warrant paying for a modded SH3 5 times over? 10 times over? so on?

obviously a question that cannot be answered at this point

but one statement i can make for sure... in order to be worth the $150- $200 a year minimum it could potentially cost to play this title at any really enjoyable and immerse level - it better be the best silent hunter in the entire series.

Im sure as with other online games... you can pay for 3 - 6 month blocks for a lower rate... but then again, in 2012 i didnt spend more than $100 on video games all year long

seems like a tall order - it appears that the free is the hook, but to be very enjoyable or competitive with other players - there lies the line and sinker... the very reason i sunk a whole 10 minutes game time into World of Tanks and never looked back.

That was a really well written post

thank you :salute:

My concern is that this is just Ubisoft's way of saying "This is the way it is going to be from here on out!"

a good possibility that it will be this way from here on out - at least for ubisoft.

I have had many discussions with folks I know about why simulators went from being one of the sure bets in the PC gaming market to something of a extreme fringe genre where only the most dedicated stick around and we only get a slow trickle of new blood.

in the yesteryear of gaming... right up until the late 1990s and early 2000s a lot of imagination was required to play video games of any type, let alone simulators.

video games as a whole (sims included) allow us to go out and do things we wouldnt ordinarily be able to do. Liberate Europe, Invade another planet, fly a 747 from New York to London, build a roman empire.

Simulators require a lot of imagination and patience when compared to a more "arcade" experience and i think a lot of this has to do with the instant gratification generation. we as a society very abruptly moved from one generation who very recently had to mail a letter hand written on actual paper and wait sometimes a week for a response and moved to a generation who has probably never written a letter and instead sends instantaneous communication from one side of the planet to the other. And thats no fault of theirs... they have that stuff now because WE got tired of waiting 14 days for a response from grandpa in Florida.

as people become more accustomed to instant gratification, the patience and imagination required to complete a real time 14 hour flight in Microsoft Flight Simulator diminishes in the players... as does the attention span (if you will) to sit and actually run the numbers, calculate your next move and put the time and effort into plotting an attack against a convoy for example.

Big publishers don't want us around anymore, they tell us "not everyone has time for those sims, we need to try and grab a wider audience that might not care about historical or technical accuracy) without even looking at the fact that simulators are very much a "if you build it, they will come" kind of thing.

completely agree, especially with that last part, Silent Hunter was technical, and became more technical with the mods, but still brought in a large number of players who would have otherwise probably overlooked a submarine simulator.

In a way, I am glad that big publishers leave sims to smaller, more talented, dedicated and more ethical privately owned developers, they have proved that customer satisfaction is not as important to them as their overall sales.

i think the next great subsim will probably be community developed and community backed... If every member of this site donated a dollar, we would already be off to a decent start.

if every member here donated $20 we would have about $1.7M invested in development of a title created entirely within the community.

[TorpX]

Good OP! :up:


... what concerns you most about SHO?

What concerns me about it, or maybe I should say disturbs me, is that it shows Ubisoft is stubbornly determined to pursue their fast buck strategy even now. They seem to have learned nothing from their past escapades, and show little desire to.

If they had invested the sum they've spent on SHO, in making SH4 or SH5 GOOD, both we and they would be much better off.


Sometimes I wish I would win the lottery so I could buy Silent Hunter, and make it what it should be. How much do you think Ubi would want for Silent Hunter Commander's Edition? :wah:

[GoldenRivet]

How much do you think Ubi would want for Silent Hunter Commander's Edition? :wah:


a lot more than i have in my checking account

[Sailor Steve]

But what if you play it and you find it somewhat enjoyable? enjoyable enough to pay the umpteen dollars a month to play it.
As I said in my earlier post, If it's fun enough to play, I'll play it. It's my understanding that there won't be a monthly fee to play it, which is good because that is something I will never do. Well, mostly not. I'll see how ROF works out when I finally have a computer that will run it.

Assume now that you play it with the longevity by which you have enjoyed Silent Hunter III for example

does the gaming experience you had with Silent Hunter Online warrant paying for a modded SH3 5 times over? 10 times over? so on?
No. If it was a perfect sim that allowed the same gameplay that SHII and Destroyer Command had? Maybe. I'd have to see before I could answer that.

All that said, just from what I've seen I'm already fairly well convinced that it's not the kind of game that will hold my interest for long.

it appears that the free is the hook, but to be very enjoyable or competitive with other players - there lies the line and sinker... the very reason i sunk a whole 10 minutes game time into World of Tanks and never looked back.
No. If the game was interesting to me I might be convinced to pay to have other sub types, but that would be a one-time event. Pay to get goodies sooner? No. I don't care for "competitive" games. Adversarial play? Sure, but not competing against other players on the same side. Not only is that about as unrealistic as you can get, but it doesn't appeal to me at any personal level.

[Feuer Frei!]

Nothing concerns me about SHO. Why? Because i won't play it.
Too simplistic and restricted in development for my tastes. Looks like a game made for 10-year-olds tbh.
Also, there seems to be a general consensus here perhaps that Ubisoft has deemed sub sims dead under the water, we can see that with this latest installment, then why the hell do they persist in producing SHO? I mean really, if there is no dollars to be made in sub sims then why bother?

It's a niche market for one, and two, well, we all know what sort of release states the silent hunter series of games has had.
Why waste precious resources producing more sub sims when we and they know that it ain't gonna make them rich and no way in hell will there be ongoing support for it with upgrades/updates because.........sub sims are no money-makers for developers.

The key to it is if you want to produce sub sims, then you have to have passion! Not a view to milking the cow for all it's worth(making money). Passion!
Let's face it, Ubi has bigger fish to fry then stuffing around with a browser game which is marketed towards god-knows-who. Can't be sub simmers, surely!
Adolescent, puberty blue, pimply-faced teens who have a penchant for raising more than just a periscope. Who knows.

As for bigger fish, FarCry series, AC Series, to name 2.
Yea i realize also that game devs have seperate teams for seperate games being developed in-house.
Still, why oh why bother Ubisoft?

[BigBANGtheory]

The art of a good sim franchise imho is to strive closer to perfection and realism with each itteration. What concerns me is that instead of building on and improving SH we've got something that just completely ignores all that, and thus raises the question will we ever see the light?

You might as well covert Halo into a browser based FPS and release it on xbox as a new a fresh look to the series. It will probably get a solid 3/5 in xbox reviews too as the gaming press is largely bent as hell.

I think part of the problem here is that SHO is being marketed completely wrong, this is not PC gaming this should be marketed towards Android & iOS. Silent Hunter Online (for tablets) and when you look at it in that context actually there is some merit and good work going on. I think they should use the gyro sensors to move the periscope that would be ace :D

[longam]

Warp
Lack of 3D
Browser based game play

If I was at my old job it would do to pass time......but

[Harald_Lange]

Nothing concerns me either, I have Sh3 & NYGM, what is there to complain about ?

[John Channing]

I'm gonna go with Steve on this one. If it's fun I will play it. If it keeps my interest I will stay with it. Only time will tell.

I can enjoy the Sub in Battlefield 1942.

I can also enjoy SH4, full realism, no map contacts or external camera in an S Boat with no radar.

JCC

[SubV]

They should break contract with Ubisoft and start a Silent Hunter kickstarter.

[vanjast]

My concerns...
It's all ON-LINE... Very bad for client game ownership - nothing beats a CD at the moment. This is just another method of working the clients bank account over when they want too. It's also probably an indication that UBI is having problems with their developer staff - they cannot seem to keep them ??. Not that new ideas are bad, but non-sensical ideas that do not cultivate client 'loyalty'.

That being said, as I mentioned before.. it opens the door for other private developers to provide a better product.
:hmmm:

[desertstriker]

you hit it on the head Golden, and startrekmike is right too. I have noticed (heck i am only 20 this year) that my generation is more into the fast action shooters like Battlefield 3 and now 4. I even enjoy these games but they don't call to me like silent hunter 3 does.

This brings me to make this point we (and many others) have called for a SDK kit for SH3 but why don't they oblidge us? i can only imagine they are afraid of the fact we would revive the game and make it what SH5 and SH4 could have been. I point to a source code project called freespace2 open a while back volition released the source code and the game has been updated with really cool modern day shinny graphics and many moders have made their own models for ships.

Unfortunatly i thik Ubi is doing this to see if the multiplayer will revive the genre. and they look to many other games that are successful because of multiplayer. i point to call of duty battlefeild 3 and many more where you can complete the "story" in under 8 hours but then the devs design a multilayer that is more than the story and is designed to be the backbone of the game.

now if you want to know what really scares me about SHO it is what are they going to do to get money from players. yes it is free to play but all games that are F2P have some "hook" to get money will that stick us to basic torpedoes? a little type 2 and to get a better sub you have to pay? to join whatever form of alliance/guild you have to pay to join/ start? or oh you want a new conning tower or something that will be $20, or heaven forbid pay to repair.

[Bathrone]

Ubisoft exploited cheap labour for SH4 and SH5 by doing the development in Romania and got pretty much a cheap quality product out the door. Ubisoft Romania eventually got itself into producing more high quality software later on (Assasins Creed) but those early projects didnt go well for them.

A sim game requires a whole bunch of subject matter expertise, research and functionally involved coding. As opposed to a shooter which has wider appeal and more straightforward environments and objects.

What tends to happen is smaller studios decide to take the risk on, and appeal to things like the greater shelf life of a sim game as opposed to the often rapid loss of interest with this weeks current shooter game in a way to get a publisher. Usually the publisher screw them over on dates, and the smaller studio wanting to establish itself accepts unrealistic publisher terms.

So increasing you find titles like SH5 and IL2 Cliffs of Dover failing miserably with unstable and buggy outcomes.

I dont mind the freemium model and I dont mind spending here and there on my gaming....Each of my graphics cards was over a thousand dollars....As opposed to other hobbies one might do like motorsport or sailing yachts this is pretty cheap.

My concern isnt the fremium model, its the loss of high quality, robust and detailed simulation games.

[Cybermat47]

Ubisoft exploited cheap labour for SH4 and SH5 by doing the development in Romania

They also made SHIII in Romania.

[Vince82]

SHO :up:

-I think we can only welcome it. I'm not saying it will be a better sim than the silent hunter series we got already, but it will be a better game and it will evolve. 2d will become 3d in time.

-I think there is a way bigger market for it than the games we got at the moment. Which is great because than submarine games will be more popular.

-Support for SHO will be very good I expect.

[Takeda Shingen]

SHO :up:

-I think we can only welcome it. I'm not saying it will be a better sim than the silent hunter series we got already, but it will be a better game and it will evolve. 2d will become 3d in time.

-I think there is a way bigger market for it than the games we got at the moment. Which is great because than submarine games will be more popular.

-Support for SHO will be very good I expect.

Has there been an increase of sales and interest in Steel Beasts in the wake of World of Tanks? Moreover, unlike WoT, SHO is a brower game. I wouldn't count on it becoming SH3/4/5 online. All of this, combined with the now poor reputation of the series, doesn't add up to a financial success to in my view.

[TheDarkWraith]

Has there been an increase of sales and interest in Steel Beasts in the wake of World of Tanks? Moreover, unlike WoT, SHO is a brower game. I wouldn't count on it becoming SH3/4/5 online. All of this, combined with the now poor reputation of the series, doesn't add up to a financial success to in my view.

Want to see just how ashamed Ubi is of Silent Hunter 5? Go to ubi's website and try to find Silent Hunter V in their little scrollable windows for games. You can't find it! Silent Hunter III and IV is there though. You have to dig really deep to find any mention of Silent Hunter V.

[Ducimus]

Nothing concerns me about SHO. Why? Because i won't play it.
Too simplistic and restricted in development for my tastes.


Pretty much how I feel about SHO, with one added reason. Being an online only title, there's going to be a problem:

Ubisoft's QA sucks.

Unlike SH3, SH4, and SH5, there will be no way for the player community to fix or find work arounds for the many bugs and broken features that Ubisoft will inevitably leave in the game after they abandon it for other projects.

[Red October1984]

The fact that it's an online only title....

That is annoying. Ubi doesn't care anymore. It's as simple as that for me.

[Vince82]

All of this, combined with the now poor reputation of the series, doesn't add up to a financial success to in my view.

Edit (so it's better understandable) It's a 'free' online game it's almost certainly going to be succesfull. Even we can try it at no cost at all. Reputation within a relatively small group of people doesn't matter at all, because Ubi is targetting a way larger market than the subsim community.

[GoldenRivet]

reputation within a relatively small group of people doesn't matter at all.

i think the opposite is true

in a small community reputation is everything.

the problem here is that ubi is trying to make a subsim that is naturally a niche market into a non-niche market... in other words, generally a small group have loved and nurtured the series. now they want to make it available to everyone and try to get everyone to love it and nuture it.

when they dont love it... and it loses money and gets bad reviews or a poor reception the subsim genre will probably become a "leper" genre that developers shy away from in the future.

which leaves us with no new game titles for years and years

Im here to tell you this free to play, pay to win / browser game mash up is not going to pair well with a subsim.

but thats just my opinion talking

[Takeda Shingen]

It's a free online game it's almost certainly going to be succesfull. Even we can try it at no cost at all, reputation within a relatively small group of people doesn't matter at all. Ubi is targetting a way larger market than the subsim community.

The reputation absolutely does matter, especially once you stick the Silent Hunter intellectual property label on it. And a P2W game is absolutely not free.

[Julhelm]

He means that the small hardcore community isn't the sole audience for this kind of game, so whether or not subsim posters hate the game has little effect on things. The majority of players never visit the forums to begin with...

[Takeda Shingen]

He means that the small hardcore community isn't the sole audience for this kind of game, so whether or not subsim posters hate the game has little effect on things. The majority of players never visit the forums to begin with...

In the modern world of the internet, reviews of previous titles are only a Google search away. It will take virtually no effort to see what people think of the series. And any kind of tolerance will last as long as it takes for people to realize that it costs $1.50 US to avoid the mandatory cooldown period.

[desertstriker]

It's a free online game it's almost certainly going to be succesfull. Even we can try it at no cost at all, reputation within a relatively small group of people doesn't matter at all. Ubi is targetting a way larger market than the subsim community.


But ubi cant do it without the subsim.com community because what we say will matter. if we all hate the game thats ALOT of people saying it is garbage. why did they invite onkel neal down and give his thoughts? Ubi is targeting a larger community you are right there but how many of that outer target will stick with the game? probably not alot because they don't have the patience for the genre.

[Takeda Shingen]

But ubi cant do it without the subsim.com community because what we say will matter. if we all hate the game thats ALOT of people saying it is garbage. why did they invite onkel neal down and give his thoughts? Ubi is targeting a larger community you are right there but how many of that outer target will stick with the game? probably not alot because they don't have the patience for the genre.

They already are doing it without this community's blessing. They're not counting on us, they are counting on a WoT style cash-in. The problem is that SHO will almost certainly be nowhere as good as WoT.

[Julhelm]

If you ever bothered to look on the games facebook page, for instance, the majority of comments there seem to be in the positive, with the exception of the very early once around the time the game was revealed.

[Takeda Shingen]

Must have been a good game, then.

[Julhelm]

I wouldn't know, since I haven't played it. The people who follow it on facebook certainly seem to like what they see. It's not being made for you or me so whether we like it or not is of little concern.

[GoldenRivet]

i would like to point out that a number of comments at the ubi forums and on the facebook page that could be in any way construed as negative are sumarily removed by the management

Ubi is very very strict with their information and opinion control, especially pre release

[desertstriker]

i would like to point out that a number of comments at the ubi forums and on the facebook page that could be in any way construed as negative are sumarily removed by the management

Ubi is very very strict with their information and opinion control, especially pre release
yeah they banned me from the SHO facebook

[Vince82]

So Ubi are communists after all?

:hmmm: I better not post this on facebook, hehe.

[himmelreiter]

I wouldn't know, since I haven't played it. The people who follow it on facebook certainly seem to like what they see. It's not being made for you or me so whether we like it or not is of little concern.
I don't give a penny on FB based opinions anyway, but you made the point: judge it after you played! And: Judge it with the right expectations in mind. This is not a submarine hardcore simulation like SH3 + mods. I'm testing closed beta since February and know it very well. IMHO it is just a SH related online game which simple missions can be played in half an hour at home time. But you can also choose a heavy escorted convoy and enjoy a multi play of a few hours chatting with the community. Just for fun, nothing serious. :woot:

[B_O_L_T]

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.

I too have been here since the start, my first exposure to computer gaming was playing tic tac toe using punched cards on the mainframe at my father’s workplace. My first personal computer, the zx80 kit I purchased and built back in 1980, and my first naval game, Gato on the Apple. However, it would seem unlike a large proportion of this community, I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.

[desertstriker]

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.

I too have been here since the start, my first exposure to computer gaming was playing tic tac toe using punched cards on the mainframe at my father’s workplace. My first personal computer, the zx80 kit I purchased and built back in 1980, and my first naval game, Gato on the Apple. However, it would seem unlike a large proportion of this community, I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realize the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.
its not that we don't respect f2p its just that ubi is doing it and has made increasingly bad subsims, and if patterns hold true SHO will be buggy beyond buggy (and we have no proof this is not the case).
now while ubi is the only corporation to make a subsim for a while they have increasingly spat on the consumer by releasing unfinished games and leaving it to our hard working modders to fix their SNAFU. now they have made it so not even our modders will be able to fix SHO.

I think most are just being pessimistically optimistic about SHO and retain some hope. however this game could also be final rivet in the Iron coffin:har: for the genre if it doesn't pan out

[Sailor Steve]

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.
I have to disagree. I don't think it reflects badly on this community at all. For the most part the Subsim community are just that - people who want a decent submarine simulator. We disagree on what that is, but we pretty much agree on what we don't want, which is a pretty game that tries to be everything to everybody. That F2P is the "largest growing sector of the gaming market" reflects not on simulation buffs, but on the kids who don't want to think about simulations or history, or to think at all, but just want to blow stuff up and be dazzled by pretty pictures.

I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.
There is nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with any kind of gaming. A great many members here play a great many different types of games. A testimonial to that is the General Games forum. Part of the problem is that some of us just want a good simulation. First, F2P doesn't seem to lend itself to that, and second, as has been pointed out, Ubisoft has a steadily declining reputation where the subsim is concerned. I'm looking forward to having a computer that will play Rise Of Flight, but single in-the-cockpit flight sims lend themselves well to multiplayer, whereas being the captain of a submarine does not.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles.
I am hoping it does well. That doesn't mean what they are offering holds any attraction for me. As I said, I will give it a shot, but their chances of getting any money from me are nil.

For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.
That's the problem: It has been increasingly "for bad". Ubi tries, insisting on what they think we want, but not listening when we tell them what we want and what we don't want, and then when it fails they blame us or they blame "the market". We'll see how it goes this time.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.
Not in this case. The whole purpose of a forum is for people to say what they think. Ubi didn't listen to us before; what makes you think they care what we think now.

I puchased SH3 before I had a computer that would run it. When SH4 was released some said they would wait and read the reviews before they would give Ubi their money. I bought it sight unseen (I was homeless at the time and couldn't play anything at all) and said "We owe it to the community to support subsims." When SH5 came out I said the same thing, but when they announced the "online only" DRM scheme I refused to give them my money until I could play it offline. Otherwise I would have supported it sight unseen, just like before.

Now I've finally joined the naysayers. Ubisoft gets nothing from me until they prove themselves. This doesn't reflect badly on me, or on the community. It reflects badly on a company that has steadfastly refused to listen to what this community says, and continuously blames us for their failures. As for SHO? We'll see.

[Vince82]

realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time.


Well said.


As I said, I will give it a shot, but their chances of getting any money from me are nil.


They don't need your money, but would love it if you would try the game. Myself, they are probably also not getting any money out of me as I don't really use a credit card or anything else.



The whole purpose of a forum is for people to say what they think.


:sunny:

[xerxes313]

A good friend of mine Charles Thompson worked for blizzard on WoW during its initial launch and up to the used second expansion,and we used to talk about how much work was involved with it.

I remember he use to talk about the 100+ hour work weeks on bug fixes and adding new quests and balancing that was released every tuesday in server maintenence. I dont know how many people blizz had or is now working but that is a lot of payroll and overtime to pay employees.

I doubt highly that ubi would have such a large team working on SHO but I understand the need for an MMO to have a subscribtion model and why games like Guild Wars and SWTOR need some sort of cash flow to help with servers and such.

Just my 2cents.

[Seeadler]

I doubt highly that ubi would have such a large team working on SHO

About 20-25 programmers in Vienna (Austria) and 15 for server administration, user support, QA, community management etc. in Dusseldorf (Germany)

[desertstriker]

About 20-25 programmers in Vienna (Austria) and 15 for server administration, user support, QA, community management etc. in Dusseldorf (Germany)
25 for programing is a decent amount but certainly not a whole lot. as for 15 for server admin ect is hardly a number worth mentioning. the college I go to has that number and that is for 41k students

[CaliEs]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7EPOtERk1I

[Rockin Robbins]

Nice video. Useless but nice. A bit entertaining cheap shot. Maybe appropriate for SHO, I don't know.

But the fact is that something has to break us out of our present paradigm of video game development. Now it works something like this. You are an executive for a large, faceless and inhuman game company called Ubi. You get a wild hair somewhere we'd rather not talk about and it's time to make a subsim. So you get a team of programmers together who aren't particularly interested in submarines, simulation, realism or whatever (they worked on Borderlands last week) and give them a fixed budget and a certain but certainly inadequate length of time. Whatever they turn out in that not-long-enough time will hit the market. So they work for several months, the code is frozen the DVDs are stamped and the game hits the street. Then the developers are let go, fired, cashed in the project is over. Simultaneously the game company gushes about how they have a breakthrough simulation, promise bug fixes and upgraded content that will never happen. For two or three months people buy the product and then the well runs dry and the money stops flowing in.

At this point, what's in it for the game company to fix bugs? That's an expense and they're in business to obtain income. It just isn't going to happen. You want additional content? They have to hire a new dev team who know nothing about the product they are "enhancing." The old team didn't document their code because they knew they were producing.......wait for it.......a drink coaster. It doesn't matter what stuff is stamped in it, the real product is a drink coaster that looks kinda like a DVD.

It's a year later and the game company says it's time for a new version. Do we get continuity, a building on the knowledge of the past to produce a better quality product? That's impossible. The first dev team is toast, they didn't document anyway and they're all working on Farmville 2. These new guys are gonna have to reinvent the wheel. Inevitably they steal what they think they can work with from the first game even though they don't understand how it works at all. So they inherit many of the old game's bugs. Then they invent a whole new bundle of bugs of their own. Does it take Stephen Hawking to tell you that the second game, produced with lower budget in a shorter time by lesser programmers will be worse? Do we really expect progress? Or do we sadly laugh?

The drink coaster paradigm of game production is okay for casual games, but for games of depth that deign to call themselves simulation, we're at the end of the road. We can get a different simulator every year. We cannot get a better simulator every year. That need synergy. It needs continuity with the same people working together on the same project over a period of years. If they're going to do that they are going to have to be paid. If they're going to be paid, we are going to have to provide the money.

You can see where I'm going. Subscription games are absolutely necessary and unavoidable if simulation, not just submarine simulation, is going to show any progress over the present state.

I hate the pay to win strategy of "free" on-line games. That's playing your customers for patsies. We deserve better than that. Everyone should have access to the entire game. No selling submarines, torpedoes, virtual toilet paper or other smarmy practices that tell the customer he isn't respected at all. That leaves us with a monthly subscription price.

And the OP has it perfectly. How much are we paying now? If SH has a game a year for $60 that's $60 per year that we already pay. In effect, we already subscribe for a guarantee of the same old thing. What if you were offered a $5.00 per month subscription to Silent Hunter (no more versions!) that would continue to evolve for years. What if this game were a download content game, you'd download the game but play it locally on your computer. What if you got real, meaningful monthly upgrades that vaporized bugs, brought in new content that you cared about, a great on-line community where game developers would actively sound out the players for their input and actually follow up on it? What if there were optional on-line server-based multiplayer scenarios like there are for countless first person shooters today. Individual players have their own local copies of the games. They can interact with others or play the game single player.

Now $5.00 a month is $60 per year, the same as you pay now to be insulted. Wouldn't you pay that to be valued? Wouldn't you pay that for your game to actually improve over time instead of just be abandoned and all the programmers fired? Is that worthy of this cheap shot video?

SH3 and SH4 are great. But they are full of problems and unfulfilled possibilities. They've done little more than whet my appetite for what could be. I'm not willing to pay for more of the same old drink coaster dance, especially pay in advance. SHO isn't what I'm looking for--I'm not looking for a strictly casual game--but it is a move outside the drink coaster mindset. I'll watch with interest!

[TorpX]

I like your ideas RR.

The only stipulation I would make before entering into the bargain, is that I control the game and can continue to play it after Ubi (or whoever) decides to move on to simulating cheap gangsters shooting and knifing each other, or simulating alligator wrestling, or whatever. Of course, the longer they stick with it, the better the end product (we hope). However, sooner or later, the people involved will want to move on. We certainly have learned that by now. If you have to pay and pay, just to play what is already there, I don't see much advantage to it.



Is it true that the devs did not document their code? I was under the impression that this was SOP. Why would anyone even hire professionals to produce code that wasn't documented? It seems like it's value would be very dubious.