What Microsoft Flight can teach us about Silent Hunter online.

StarTrekMike · 08-20-12, 09:26 PM

I have been keeping a eye on SHO since it was announced, the idea of a free to play MMO version of one of my most beloved franchises leaves me feeling pretty depressed but I think that the bigger problem is that it is setting itself up for failure.

We only need to look at Microsoft Flight to see how this is all going to go.

While I know that Microsoft Flight was not a MMO, it was a free to play game and does perfectly reflect the kind of trouble that SHO will have to deal with, you see, Microsoft was banking on the idea that Flight was going to be a success because it was more accessible and friendly to the casual or non-gamer types, this is fine on paper but the reality was far from ideal.

When it was released, Flight was met with anger and derision from the Flight simulator fanbase that Microsoft had built over many years of consistently good releases (not perfect, but good) and many of those hardcore fans are still playing FSX and have invested much more than the initial purchase price since it's release (third party aircraft, addons, peripherals and even DIY cockpits!), these are the fans that were clamoring for a new FS title and Microsoft decided that their input was not in line with the current needs of the average gamer.

The Flight developers (or at least those who were in charge) made it very clear that they were not going to make the game for FSX fans, they even tossed thinly veiled insults at the FSX community due to the negative response they were getting when it was first announced, this should have been their first clue.

When Flight was released, it contained two aircraft and part of the island of Hawaii, I downloaded it, tried it out for a few hours and uninstalled it, many others did the same.

Flight was designed around the idea that Microsoft would release individual aircraft and terrain packages that would cost between $10 and $20 each and that the fans would buy this stuff in droves.

But there was no mad rush, no huge untapped casual flight sim market, they had banked on the idea that the casual gamer wanted a flight sim and that they would also spend large amounts of money on what could have easily been released as a complete product anyway, there was no market for Flight.

Of coarse Flight had it's online supporters, those who were glass half full about it and played it in hopes that it would get better, but it's small fanbase was simply not enough and they had to close the doors.

Here is a lesson for SHO, they cannot tap a market that does not exist, sure a few folks will stick with it and support it but not enough, we know this because pretty much the whole subsimming community is found here, on subsim.

We know what Subsim thinks of this game, so we know what kind of response to expect.

I know that I have rambled on about MS Flight for awhile here but I think that the recent total failure of Flight is a good indication of where SHO is headed.

I will give it a try, perhaps even give it a week to see how things go but I don't think (from what I have seen and read about) that this is the kind of thing that we are really going to be interested in and I doubt that a market exists (those who never knew they wanted a free to play WWII subsim) outside of our community.

Flight was the last words of the famous Flight Simulator franchise and I believe that SHO will be the last words of the once great Silent Hunter franchise.

Shame it had to end this way.

Julhelm · 08-21-12, 11:15 AM

Flight actually started out much more along the lines of "FS11" with several of the old ACES devs working on it but was then taken over by Joshua Howard (whose sole claim to fame was as the exec on another F2P disaster) who proceeded to run it into the ground. The failure of Flight is less an indication of some inherent flaw with F2P model than it is indicative of a very flawed management culture within MS.

0rpheus · 08-21-12, 01:21 PM

I think his point was more that Flight demonstrated what happens when you attempt to 'retarget' an existing hardcore franchise towards a more casual model - and in that respect I think he's spot on.

The reaction to SHO from most of the subsimmers I know (both here and elsewhere) has been pretty poor, meaning there's a good chance it won't take off with the 'sim' community. But it's the sim community that makes these games a success, and in that respect Flight is a good example - it veered away from its base, simplified the flight model and left most of the people who're into flight sims with a sour taste in their mouth.

If it turns out that there's little or no interest from the 'casual' gamer, then your product is basically boned - you've alienated your hardcore, long term fans, but failed to replace them with new ones - and so the whole thing falls on its arse.

Flight didn't sell well enough and was canned early to prevent any further losses. I'm a flight sim fan, but after reading about it, I didn't fancy it - purely because it's 'dumbed down'. I'll take DCS A-10 over an arcade sim every time, and the recent success of Dark Souls and the forthcoming DOTA2 are indicative of a trend (back) towards greater difficulty and player challenge, as the sub-AAA developers begin to realise that complex systems aren't as off-putting as the marketing chumps thought. People love learning.

Forcing previously complex franchises (especially sims, of any kind) into a more 'casual' mindset is an easy road - to failure.

Zanarkin · 08-21-12, 02:34 PM

I too played FX10 and it was 'ok' but with a few planes to pick from and those being 'fictitious' airlines, it lost it's thrill after a weekend or so.

That's when I discovered mods. The game is massive so I cannot fault the devs for having to draw the line at some point but this is where modders pick up the slack tweaking, tuning, reskinning, and all the other additions mods bring to the game.

Soon after, I was flying routes for a virtual airline website along side other pilots online with other players working traffic control. I later saw on the news where Air Force One flew to Iraq so decided I wanted to and left Andrews AFB to do just that with a downloaded AF1 complete with fighter escorts. I eventually enjoyed flying cargo for UPS for a time and it was a thrill to approach a major airport and see Delta, American Airlines, and all the others taxing, parked, etc and then off to the east was the cargo area littered with various UPS aircraft.

The game was night and day. A game that would have been a cute distraction for a week turned into a year of fun for me as the addiction to add more and more mods to bring the world to life took over.

Any sim game, and I mean ANY, without the ability to add constant content to tweak the game to your interest cannot and will not hold anyone's attention. With that said, I do not consider DLC content like a 'plane for $9.99' or 'Indian Ocean campaign for $19.99' to be the content we crave. That content does not change the game but instead changes scenery and objects. We want to change the clouds, change the waves, change the wind, and change the sounds and those things will never change.

This is why any online 'sim' game will be a passing fad. There will be no flags on my U-Boat, no radio tuned to Berlin with urgent news interruptions, no realistic splashing up onto the conning tower, no realistic looking weather, no flares shot up from sinking ships, no accurate UI to replace futuristic (to 1940s) UI, no bypassing the silly magic abilities, no accurate flags but instead have a re-visioned politically correct German flag, no custom accurate identification books, no reskinned sub bunker, no custom campaigns to replace idiotic vanilla ones, no getting rid of chat bubbles over characters, no accurate maps, not any of the things that I enjoy most when I sit down to play. All that I will be left with is a generic sub with a torpedo shoot button and a crosshair. That will be fine for a weekend.

It will be a dead stale world much like FX10 was if played vanilla.

The_Pharoah · 08-21-12, 08:55 PM

*sigh*

MSF is a good example of where the devs DIDN'T listen to the customer and SHO is heading there as well if they don't make changes. Agree with all the posts above - this is a sim...and sim's don't necessarily attract the casual gamer (thats what we have consols and MW3 for people!!).

doulos05 · 08-22-12, 02:54 AM

I'm not sure. IF the can re-imagine it as a flotilla management game rather than a casual sim, there would be a market for that. I play dozens of management games because that's a whole different kind of fun. Most of them of F2P and honestly I think it's an area that F2P fits really well in (at least it's been my experience that it does.

Julhelm · 08-22-12, 08:34 AM

Well my point was that the failure of Flight was pretty much down to them appointing a demonstrated incompetent with no knowledge or interest in the subject as project lead. Hence the talk about they offered crap content like cockpit-less aircraft and the game itself being devoid of any actual gameplay and then wondered why noone bought it. Flight didn't fail because it was F2P - Flight failed because it was a crap game with no gameplay compounded with having no content at launch.

Meanwhile the impression I got from Neal's interview was that the SHO devs are genuinely interested in and care about sub sims. I think they honestly want to make a good submarine game withing the constraints of the F2P model and if the gameplay is good and they have a good amount of content at launch it will be a success.

Flight should've targeted the same demographic as Strike Fighters: People who like planes and realism but have no time or interest in the complex hardcore procedures of FS. Had they had a project lead who actually played flight sims this would probably have happened. But instead they put Joshua Howard in charge who seemed to have nothing but distaste for flight simmers.

Herr-Berbunch · 08-22-12, 09:29 AM

It's all very well the devs being subsim fans, they still have to play within Ubi's remit - and we know how well that's been in the past.

If the devs have been given a free-ish rein then that is more hopeful.

Julhelm · 08-22-12, 10:58 AM

To be fair, the major problem with UBI's games on PC is that they tend to be very buggy and lacking in the QA and support department. Neither SH4 nor 5 were conceptually flawed games and I don't think SHO will be either.

LoneWolf88 · 08-22-12, 07:00 PM

And the worst thing is that I don't even remember the last game not made for "casual gamers" by Ubisoft... It was a loooong time ago for sure

Julhelm · 08-23-12, 03:56 AM

SH5? Cliffs of Dover? Ghost Recon Future Soldier? AssCreed 3? Far Cry 3? Those games are as hardcore as they come.

StarTrekMike · 08-23-12, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julhelm

SH5? Cliffs of Dover? Ghost Recon Future Soldier? AssCreed 3? Far Cry 3? Those games are as hardcore as they come.

SH5 was released and then swiftly abandoned, almost like they were keen to make it and than just kinda lost interest half way through (don't get me wrong, I love the game but only after extensive modding).

Cliffs of Dover was rushed out the door by Ubi, even though Maddox was not even close to being done with it, again, it seems like Ubi was just kinda done making games like that and wanted to clear out the remaining loose ends.

Ghost recon future soldier was a joke, it was a spit on the face to any fan that has stuck with the franchise since the beginning, it is a arcade shooter for the casual market at best and probably will be dropped in favor of Ghost Recon online.

Assassins creed 3, well, that will hopefully be a good game but it was never hardcore in the same way a subsim or a flight sim is hardcore, it is built for a diverse market and while it is a very good franchise, it is not very complicated and pretty easy to make once you have all the tools nailed down.

Far cry 3 looks like another shooter, I mean, it looks good but it is just another shooter.

Ubisoft has spoken at length about how it has all but abandoned conventional games and now is going to move to service based gaming (F2P style internet games).

I would not expect Ubisoft to invest the needed man hours and research that is needed to make a good, solid simulator, it is a difficult genre for them to stay in because they are simply not willing to produce products that have the level of quality that we all expect, SHO is a good indication that they are just telling us to move on and forget about any future Silent Hunter title that lives up to it's name.

Sorry for being so negative but that is how it looks on my end.

The_Pharoah · 08-23-12, 07:57 PM

Mike...you're just telling it like it is.

StarTrekMike · 08-24-12, 12:21 AM

It really is a shame, I had hopes that Ubisoft would at least take one more solid pass at the Silent Hunter franchise, possibly release something like SH4 but with the SH5 level of graphic fidelity (say what you will about "graphics meaning nothing", SH5 is a great looking game and that adds to the immersion).

I hope that once SHO fails (and it will, lets not lie to ourselves), Ubisoft does the right thing and releases the franchise to another developer that is more willing to put the time and effort into it and give us a great new addition to the franchise.

Honestly, I don't even know why Ubisoft still bothers to hold the copyright, it seems that many companies would rather just sit on a franchise and keep it dead than let a more willing company take over and produce something for the market they clearly have no interest in.

SH4 and SH5 are always going to be my go-to WWII subsims, I don't see SHO fitting into that at all, the lack of proper free-roaming (navigation means nothing now), the lack of a proper deck view (that we have seen, though they say it is there in a interview), the reliance on online play and what will probably be just another micro-transaction money grab will keep me away like the plague.

The microtransaction based F2P model works well for some games but not all, some users don't want to get nickel and dimed for a mere browser game.

BigBANGtheory · 08-24-12, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Pharoah

MSF is a good example of where the devs DIDN'T listen to the customer and SHO is heading there as well...

Absolutely true.

Also (building on what Orpheus was saying), SIM type game developers need to understand the SIM player first not try to carve out their own take on things and sell it afterwards in a 'oh I thought you guys would have loved this'.

We all know about DCS, I would argue Arma2 vs. Operation Flashpoint2 is another example.

To my mind this is a clear attempt at cross platform gaming with an eye on the Mobile market until next-gen consoles are out. F2P and online gaming has nothing to do with it just look at Mechwarrior Online using CryEngine3, which will suceed for a number of reasons...
- it moved the franchise forwards
- massive beta participation
- it never looked so good
- game Devs understand the players and have a shared vision
- game Devs are in frequent contact with players, not just via social media and forums they drop into games, voice channels, they listen and they think about it, and they respond. So there is a climate of trust.

With SHO where is the interaction with the players BEFORE going down the wrong path?

As for Man hours/effort to do a proper SIM, well I'd just point people to Combat Helo. Ok sure its not available yet, but just look at what 2 guys (perhaps 2.5) have done there. It can be done...

08-20-12, 09:26 PM	#1
StarTrekMike Navy Dude Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Made in Vermont Posts: 178 Downloads: 137 Uploads: 0	What Microsoft Flight can teach us about Silent Hunter online. I have been keeping a eye on SHO since it was announced, the idea of a free to play MMO version of one of my most beloved franchises leaves me feeling pretty depressed but I think that the bigger problem is that it is setting itself up for failure. We only need to look at Microsoft Flight to see how this is all going to go. While I know that Microsoft Flight was not a MMO, it was a free to play game and does perfectly reflect the kind of trouble that SHO will have to deal with, you see, Microsoft was banking on the idea that Flight was going to be a success because it was more accessible and friendly to the casual or non-gamer types, this is fine on paper but the reality was far from ideal. When it was released, Flight was met with anger and derision from the Flight simulator fanbase that Microsoft had built over many years of consistently good releases (not perfect, but good) and many of those hardcore fans are still playing FSX and have invested much more than the initial purchase price since it's release (third party aircraft, addons, peripherals and even DIY cockpits!), these are the fans that were clamoring for a new FS title and Microsoft decided that their input was not in line with the current needs of the average gamer. The Flight developers (or at least those who were in charge) made it very clear that they were not going to make the game for FSX fans, they even tossed thinly veiled insults at the FSX community due to the negative response they were getting when it was first announced, this should have been their first clue. When Flight was released, it contained two aircraft and part of the island of Hawaii, I downloaded it, tried it out for a few hours and uninstalled it, many others did the same. Flight was designed around the idea that Microsoft would release individual aircraft and terrain packages that would cost between $10 and $20 each and that the fans would buy this stuff in droves. But there was no mad rush, no huge untapped casual flight sim market, they had banked on the idea that the casual gamer wanted a flight sim and that they would also spend large amounts of money on what could have easily been released as a complete product anyway, there was no market for Flight. Of coarse Flight had it's online supporters, those who were glass half full about it and played it in hopes that it would get better, but it's small fanbase was simply not enough and they had to close the doors. Here is a lesson for SHO, they cannot tap a market that does not exist, sure a few folks will stick with it and support it but not enough, we know this because pretty much the whole subsimming community is found here, on subsim. We know what Subsim thinks of this game, so we know what kind of response to expect. I know that I have rambled on about MS Flight for awhile here but I think that the recent total failure of Flight is a good indication of where SHO is headed. I will give it a try, perhaps even give it a week to see how things go but I don't think (from what I have seen and read about) that this is the kind of thing that we are really going to be interested in and I doubt that a market exists (those who never knew they wanted a free to play WWII subsim) outside of our community. Flight was the last words of the famous Flight Simulator franchise and I believe that SHO will be the last words of the once great Silent Hunter franchise. Shame it had to end this way. __________________ I think we lost em...hey whats that pinging sound?

08-21-12, 02:34 PM	#4
Zanarkin Seaman Join Date: Aug 2012 Posts: 32 Downloads: 17 Uploads: 0	I too played FX10 and it was 'ok' but with a few planes to pick from and those being 'fictitious' airlines, it lost it's thrill after a weekend or so. That's when I discovered mods. The game is massive so I cannot fault the devs for having to draw the line at some point but this is where modders pick up the slack tweaking, tuning, reskinning, and all the other additions mods bring to the game. Soon after, I was flying routes for a virtual airline website along side other pilots online with other players working traffic control. I later saw on the news where Air Force One flew to Iraq so decided I wanted to and left Andrews AFB to do just that with a downloaded AF1 complete with fighter escorts. I eventually enjoyed flying cargo for UPS for a time and it was a thrill to approach a major airport and see Delta, American Airlines, and all the others taxing, parked, etc and then off to the east was the cargo area littered with various UPS aircraft. The game was night and day. A game that would have been a cute distraction for a week turned into a year of fun for me as the addiction to add more and more mods to bring the world to life took over. Any sim game, and I mean ANY, without the ability to add constant content to tweak the game to your interest cannot and will not hold anyone's attention. With that said, I do not consider DLC content like a 'plane for $9.99' or 'Indian Ocean campaign for $19.99' to be the content we crave. That content does not change the game but instead changes scenery and objects. We want to change the clouds, change the waves, change the wind, and change the sounds and those things will never change. This is why any online 'sim' game will be a passing fad. There will be no flags on my U-Boat, no radio tuned to Berlin with urgent news interruptions, no realistic splashing up onto the conning tower, no realistic looking weather, no flares shot up from sinking ships, no accurate UI to replace futuristic (to 1940s) UI, no bypassing the silly magic abilities, no accurate flags but instead have a re-visioned politically correct German flag, no custom accurate identification books, no reskinned sub bunker, no custom campaigns to replace idiotic vanilla ones, no getting rid of chat bubbles over characters, no accurate maps, not any of the things that I enjoy most when I sit down to play. All that I will be left with is a generic sub with a torpedo shoot button and a crosshair. That will be fine for a weekend. It will be a dead stale world much like FX10 was if played vanilla. Last edited by Zanarkin; 08-21-12 at 02:44 PM.

08-22-12, 02:54 AM	#6
doulos05 Planesman Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 195 Downloads: 19 Uploads: 0	I'm not sure. IF the can re-imagine it as a flotilla management game rather than a casual sim, there would be a market for that. I play dozens of management games because that's a whole different kind of fun. Most of them of F2P and honestly I think it's an area that F2P fits really well in (at least it's been my experience that it does. __________________ *While troubleshooting a printer at work Me: "Do you want me to run the copies through again?" Boss: "Hold on, let me go get the alcohol first. Me:

08-22-12, 09:29 AM	#8
Herr-Berbunch Kaiser Bill's batman Join Date: May 2010 Location: AN72 Posts: 13,203 Downloads: 76 Uploads: 0	It's all very well the devs being subsim fans, they still have to play within Ubi's remit - and we know how well that's been in the past. If the devs have been given a free-ish rein then that is more hopeful. __________________

08-24-12, 12:21 AM	#14
StarTrekMike Navy Dude Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Made in Vermont Posts: 178 Downloads: 137 Uploads: 0	It really is a shame, I had hopes that Ubisoft would at least take one more solid pass at the Silent Hunter franchise, possibly release something like SH4 but with the SH5 level of graphic fidelity (say what you will about "graphics meaning nothing", SH5 is a great looking game and that adds to the immersion). I hope that once SHO fails (and it will, lets not lie to ourselves), Ubisoft does the right thing and releases the franchise to another developer that is more willing to put the time and effort into it and give us a great new addition to the franchise. Honestly, I don't even know why Ubisoft still bothers to hold the copyright, it seems that many companies would rather just sit on a franchise and keep it dead than let a more willing company take over and produce something for the market they clearly have no interest in. SH4 and SH5 are always going to be my go-to WWII subsims, I don't see SHO fitting into that at all, the lack of proper free-roaming (navigation means nothing now), the lack of a proper deck view (that we have seen, though they say it is there in a interview), the reliance on online play and what will probably be just another micro-transaction money grab will keep me away like the plague. The microtransaction based F2P model works well for some games but not all, some users don't want to get nickel and dimed for a mere browser game. __________________ I think we lost em...hey whats that pinging sound?

08-21-12, 11:15 AM	#2
Julhelm Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: The Icy North Posts: 690 Downloads: 189 Uploads: 0	Flight actually started out much more along the lines of "FS11" with several of the old ACES devs working on it but was then taken over by Joshua Howard (whose sole claim to fame was as the exec on another F2P disaster) who proceeded to run it into the ground. The failure of Flight is less an indication of some inherent flaw with F2P model than it is indicative of a very flawed management culture within MS.

08-21-12, 01:21 PM	#3
0rpheus Grey Wolf Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: UK Posts: 856 Downloads: 87 Uploads: 3	I think his point was more that Flight demonstrated what happens when you attempt to 'retarget' an existing hardcore franchise towards a more casual model - and in that respect I think he's spot on. The reaction to SHO from most of the subsimmers I know (both here and elsewhere) has been pretty poor, meaning there's a good chance it won't take off with the 'sim' community. But it's the sim community that makes these games a success, and in that respect Flight is a good example - it veered away from its base, simplified the flight model and left most of the people who're into flight sims with a sour taste in their mouth. If it turns out that there's little or no interest from the 'casual' gamer, then your product is basically boned - you've alienated your hardcore, long term fans, but failed to replace them with new ones - and so the whole thing falls on its arse. Flight didn't sell well enough and was canned early to prevent any further losses. I'm a flight sim fan, but after reading about it, I didn't fancy it - purely because it's 'dumbed down'. I'll take DCS A-10 over an arcade sim every time, and the recent success of Dark Souls and the forthcoming DOTA2 are indicative of a trend (back) towards greater difficulty and player challenge, as the sub-AAA developers begin to realise that complex systems aren't as off-putting as the marketing chumps thought. People love learning. Forcing previously complex franchises (especially sims, of any kind) into a more 'casual' mindset is an easy road - to failure.

08-21-12, 08:55 PM	#5
The_Pharoah Soundman Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 142 Downloads: 51 Uploads: 0	sigh MSF is a good example of where the devs DIDN'T listen to the customer and SHO is heading there as well if they don't make changes. Agree with all the posts above - this is a sim...and sim's don't necessarily attract the casual gamer (thats what we have consols and MW3 for people!!).

08-22-12, 08:34 AM	#7
Julhelm Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: The Icy North Posts: 690 Downloads: 189 Uploads: 0	Well my point was that the failure of Flight was pretty much down to them appointing a demonstrated incompetent with no knowledge or interest in the subject as project lead. Hence the talk about they offered crap content like cockpit-less aircraft and the game itself being devoid of any actual gameplay and then wondered why noone bought it. Flight didn't fail because it was F2P - Flight failed because it was a crap game with no gameplay compounded with having no content at launch. Meanwhile the impression I got from Neal's interview was that the SHO devs are genuinely interested in and care about sub sims. I think they honestly want to make a good submarine game withing the constraints of the F2P model and if the gameplay is good and they have a good amount of content at launch it will be a success. Flight should've targeted the same demographic as Strike Fighters: People who like planes and realism but have no time or interest in the complex hardcore procedures of FS. Had they had a project lead who actually played flight sims this would probably have happened. But instead they put Joshua Howard in charge who seemed to have nothing but distaste for flight simmers.

08-22-12, 10:58 AM	#9
Julhelm Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: The Icy North Posts: 690 Downloads: 189 Uploads: 0	To be fair, the major problem with UBI's games on PC is that they tend to be very buggy and lacking in the QA and support department. Neither SH4 nor 5 were conceptually flawed games and I don't think SHO will be either.

08-22-12, 07:00 PM	#10
LoneWolf88 Nub Join Date: Aug 2012 Posts: 2 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	And the worst thing is that I don't even remember the last game not made for "casual gamers" by Ubisoft... It was a loooong time ago for sure

08-23-12, 03:56 AM	#11
Julhelm Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: The Icy North Posts: 690 Downloads: 189 Uploads: 0	SH5? Cliffs of Dover? Ghost Recon Future Soldier? AssCreed 3? Far Cry 3? Those games are as hardcore as they come.

08-23-12, 07:57 PM	#13
The_Pharoah Soundman Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 142 Downloads: 51 Uploads: 0	Mike...you're just telling it like it is.