@Pfunk:

Believe it or not, I actually agree with most of your points. What I disagree with is the notion that constant bitching brings any positive change. The big publishers are publicly traded corporate shareholders who only exist to be as profitable as possible to their shareholders.

This is just the way it is now with the death of 2nd tier publishers and no amount of complaining will turn back the clock.

Bohemia is clearly an exception to the rule, but they have some more leverage by being independent. There's also Eagle Dynamics and Gaijin. The problem is that most of these new independent studios that do show up are only concerned with (big surprise) quick profits and being the next Rovio or Zynga and try to move into the casual/mobile/online market with derivative products. Apparently it must be real easy to get financial backing for that kind of stuff.

What we as a community do need is to support up and coming studios that move into this niche, and be ready to accept a 2nd or 3rd tier game. Basically forget about AAA sims for the time being.

If we forget about quality sims then they'll die out - out of sight, out of mind - the big money men will all shake each others todgers and congratulate themselves on being right - 'Look, they don't need sims, they're not missing sims, we'll save a heap-load of money now we don't have to cater for them!' :damn:


*edit - by sims I mean proper, nearasdamnit, simulated machinery/mechanisms - not that crappy series that seems to dominate all webstores when I click under the simulation category!

Dude, we're already there. AAA sims are dead, buried, finito. The disasters that were SH5 and Il-2 CoD saw to that. What we can have is A or AA sims like ARMA or Take on Helicopters.

DCS: A-10C anyone? :hmmm: Or DCS anything, if they're not AAA. . .

And there is still hope for the latest IL-2, it's not been given up on by the devs or the community. Yet.

Just wanted to voice why I personally could give less then a crap about this Silent Hunter Online.

1. Browser based. Really? I didn't buy a beefy rig to play flash or java games in a web browser.

2. Guaranteed it will be dumbed down. For one it's browser based, for two its probably marketed at a broader audience.

3. I categorically will no longer buy any games that have a mandatory online component. Internet connections can go down, and bandwidth is no longer unlimited. I want to play my game, when i want, and not use my bandwidth to do it.

4. I have learned from experience with Age of Conan, and Lord of the Rings Online that free to play is a farce. It either hampers you so you can't do anything without spending money so it's tantamount to an extended trial, or it entices you in such a way where you end up spending more money in the long run then if you had just gotten a subscription to begin with.

5. It appears that its going to be another battle of the atlantic with a type 7 uboat. If i wanted a sub sim with that dedicated setup, id play SH5.

6. I feel betrayed. Why didn't ubi finish SH4? Why didn't they finish SH5? In fact, they dropped the ball worse on sh5 with half the game content of previous titles, half the usual support patchs, and twice the number of bugs. Instead of addressing all that, they do this. Ubisoft i give you the 1 fingered salute.

7. I'm tired of Das Boot. It's a great movie, and i've had great das boot movie like experiences in SH3 and SH4. However the main inspiration behind this series has grown old and stale on me from the constant usage to the point of being generic.

Constant bitching? The game was announced on the 27th or something. I guess we're all supposed to silently just analyze the currents of the game industry and keep our opinions to ourselves?

Well that does it. Time to go delete about 60 forum accounts since I won't need them anymore. :-?


Flight sims seem to be totally different from the rest of the sims, though there are also a number of really high fidelity racing sims out there as well. Subs don't seem to have such luck. But then again the death of MS Flight Sim is kind of like killing the most loyal customer base in sim history. If that can happen there's pretty much no way any of the rest of us can consider our loyalty any kind of security against them taking the game in another direction we don't want.

It occurs to me that maybe Ubi decided to go F2P after they saw Microsoft release with perhaps a measure of success their new F2P replacement to the venerable Microsoft Flight Simulator.


It certainly is a transition from big publisher to indie publisher these days. On the one hand it seems like it should be a fairly easy transition with where game development and distribution has gone, as in its become easier. With that said, its just baffling to wonder why big mega companies like Ubi and EA can't manage to target multiple audiences. I mean F2P doesn't exactly strike me as something a AAA sim player would really go for, no matter how many teen agers there are on Xbox live.

I think its just a case of a bunch of suits who dont even understand the product they sell seeing one format for making all their money and trying to force every shape with a jagged corner they can find under their roof into that round hole.

I really hope that EA and Ubi and companies like that crash and burn. Monopolies on the gaming industry and stifling creativity. This is one of the depressing results of successful capitalism. :shifty:

I wouldn't say DCS qualifies as AAA game in terms of production values or budget. A good example of a AAA sim would be Birds of Steel, but they are also a huge exception to the rule.

Also I think bringing in racing sims is a bit dishonest. Might as well mention the amazingly popular Farming Simulator and Railworks while we're at it, but they're not really what immediately spring to mind when we talk sims, are they?

Either way, like the guy said in the other thread - SHO is made by a different studio that never had anything to do with SH4 or SH5 so bitching at them is pointless since they most likely have very little design input anyway so what is bitching at them because you have an axe to grind with UBI going to accomplish anything? And I'm not saying you're not entitled to voicing your opinion, but we heard this already with SH5: "wah wah they changed the game bah drm bah online bah boycott".

But hey, the discussion is pointless. Go on and continue bitching against UBI for being a big profit-hungry corporation. Complaining on forums about how subsims suck is bound to be more productive than trying to develop your own subsim the way you want it to play.

Guess that's why I never could find a motivated programmer to work with.

I am all for a DCS style submarine.I love realism in my sims and the more real the more immersed I get.Just loving the just released DCS:P51.But how real can it get and be playable.The thing with high realism planes is that you control everything but in a sub you just give orders.

That said I just reinstalled SH5 and OMG I hate Ubisoft again.:nope:WTF happened??Why would they not strive for even more realism then in SH3/Sh4 at same time as creating an easy mode to the casual player????:damn:

I find your opinion annoying. Its tantamount to saying "How dare you bitch about politics if you're not willing to run or bitch about the economy if you're not willing to start your own investment firm". We are consumers and they want us to buy their product. They are retaining the Silent Hunter brand in order to temp us meanwhile basically neglecting all of the factors and design requirements which we actually value. There's no reason we can't sit in our old favourite hang out and complain about how it looks horrible.

They made a press release, we reacted to it. What do you want us to do? Only comment if we have a positive opinion of it?

And get off your high horse on racing sims. Driving an F1 car at 200mph is plenty difficult and the fidelity of some of those sims is far superior to the quality we've been seeing from most mainstream developers. Dishonest? I don't get it. A sim is a sim. Its goal is to simulate real life behavior of one thing or another. An F1 car is an insanely overengineered masterpiece of technology, and the simmer's obcession with it isn't far from our own with Subs or Aircraft or whatever.

I don't see why grinding a 100th of a second off of a lap time is any less sim realism nerd obcessive than manual targeting a convoy or stall fighting with a Messerschmitt.

It's dishonest in the sense that racing has a disproportionately bigger audience and even racing sims like RFactor or Project C.A.R.S. have substantial mainstream appeal. Racing simulation is a not a niche genre like submarine simulation or air combat simulation.

Feel free to be annoyed by my opinion. Here's a better analogy for you:

Ever hear these guys who constantly bitch about how bad/retarded politics are and they have all the right answers etc, but they never ever get off their couch and get involved in politics? Everybody knows someone like that. They bitch about the same thing year after year but can't be arsed to actually go out there and try to make a change. Am I saying you can't sit here and complain to your hearts content in a big circlejerk? No, go ahead and do so. I am saying your complaining doesn't make a difference in the end, just like the guy who sits in his couch and bitches about politics doesn't make a difference, either.

I just get so tired of these guys who complain and bitch all the time about how the sims suck and they aren't realistic etc. Know what? You had an alternative that set out to be the hyperrealistic subsim you all wanted. It was called Danger From The Deep and was opensource. You could have thrown your money at that team instead of UBI. But instead you all complained about UBI not getting it right. Now you no longer have any alternative. You can either have SHO or no new subsim at all. Or you can still play SH3 10 years from now - that's progress, right?

So no, go ahead and complain all you want if it makes you feel better about your identity as a consumer.

May I ask what planet you are on if you think Birds of Steel is a AAA simulation?

I may be missing something. Not having a console I've resorted to good old Google and YouTube to find out about this game. Not simulator. Game.

First I visited Konami's site for it, where the trailer only showed external 'arcade' views - futher investigation shows that the smaller aircraft do have cockpit views, but they certainly (in my opinion) don't match up to Cliffs, nor DCS titles, nor FSX for that matter. May as well include FS9 as well. BoS = PoS as far as simulation goes, and that's what we're talking about.

I'd put it alongside H.A.W.X, but at least that can be played on PC.

Over to you to deride my opinions again. :03:

Im a bit late to the party but all this complaining before the god dang game even goes to closed beta is crazy. We have no idea how good or bad its going to be, and it might just be good. Now I don't like MMO's at all (except Star Trek Online) but I want to see this from a perspective of unbiased, and all this complaining should be reserved to when the actual game comes out. There is prolly going to be a disclose agreement for the closed beta, but I doubt anyone is going to follow it so when it comes out I am willing to bet you will find game play vids on the internet.

You're right, andwii, but the OP asked a question and both sides must now fight it out until the bitter end, or at least until the game gets released and we actually know what we're talking about. Until then we'll happily/unhappily speculate and bicker like schoolkids.

Oh, and my dad's bigger than your dad. :stare:

:O:

Reading through some of this thread, something I blabbered about some months ago occurs to me.

We probably won't see another real submarine simulation ever again. Sub sim's are a nitch market within a nitch market. In the larger picture, they were a fad in gaming started when primarily geeks, and technically oriented people owned home computers. It's probably amazing they've lasted this long. With that train of thought one could reasonably say, "well, we should be thanking ubisoft for anything at all", however i think that time is past with SH5. That was most likely, the last nail in the old and creaky sub sim coffin.

Unless of course hell freezes over and SHO has the simulation base of Sh3, with the mechanical improvements drawn from Sh4 and Sh5* and your willing to play online shelling out money for improvements. If not, then get used to the idea of playing Sh3, 4, or 5 ten or fifteen years from now; assuming your still into sub sims at that point in time.



*(yes, disregarding bugs and broken features, they both improve on the simulation from Sh3: Sh4 with thermal layers, and Sh5 with the effects of unimplemented hydrodynamic drag),

Yeah, how about you at least read a review for simmers by simmers before posting an uninformed, prejudiced opinion?

Or read the SimHQ review which praises it.

So yeah, maybe you should do some rudimentary research before you trashtalk a great game.

You said it - game. A console game for the console gamers. Doesn't compete nor compare.

I did go to a couple of flight simming sites, both had no mention apart from slight reference in amonst the fora, and none of it good.

Yeah, whatever. All of your precious subsims are just that, games.

Now now, no need to get mad if you are wrong about something. ;)

Welcome to Subsim, a friendly place to...

I'm reminded of the release of SH5 and the low blood sugar environment that followed.

@Julhelm - really?

It's made by Gaijin for the console market, in the same manner as IL2-Birds of Prey. I have BOP for the XBOX, and Wings of Prey (almost identical game) for the PC, alongside Cliffs of Dover, IL2 1946 and DCS A-10. I've also tried the demo for BoS. This makes my opinion relevant, by your criteria.

The Gaijin games are categorically not 'simulations' in the sense of the PC IL-2 or A10 etc. They are games that come with a 'sim' flight model, nothing more. BoS in particular is appalling; terribly shonky framerate for a console and the FM is like treacle. 'Triple A simulation' it is not.

It's all 'games' when it boils down to it, no need to be facetious. I note from your post count you're relatively new here - the hostility thing really isn't welcome. Basic civility will likely extend the duration of your stay :up: