I've learned much from participating in this thread. I really want to thank the developers for contributing to the understanding and I can't ever thank them enough for the efforts they put into "finishing" SH4.

As to what the solution is to all this, I guess modding is the new frontier for the most part. It would be ideal if titles could be coded so everything but the absolute core of the code is available to modders. That way, the company can feel secure that their intellectual property is safe and essentially say, "Here...if you don't like it...fix it yourself." and we would most certainly do just that.

There is a way forward...we have governments which can bring pressure tor bear on companies via legislation. Take Poland's agricultural industry, the EU has realised that the norm of super market chains hoovering up small farms and dictating what they grow based on the swing of demand doesn't, in the long term, help the communities in which those farms exist. It provides a short term gain, followed by a long term local decline. The EU has, albeit slowly, realised that companies, due to ther pressure exerted on them by short term gain demanding markets (welcome to to financial capitalism), have no real choice but to harvest for short term gain. However, it has a long term negative effect on social capitalism. So in Poland, the EU is actively encouranging small farm holdings to remain independant, thus contributing to long term growth rather than "bubble 'n pop" markets.

So there is a slow migration of governmental thinking into market regulation, unortunately this is a slow process, but then so is the making of history as a whole. It doesn't help that a large number of governments have very close links to business, American government for example is painfully manipulated by business, so much so that we are currently seeing a bubble 'n burst American economy.

Every one has their 15 mins of fame, and history teaches us that the same applies to empires also..yet on a different scale. Given the huge numbers of factors affecting economics, it is not suprising that the current quick gain system is, well, ridiculously simple to say the least.

Just look at Irish economic growth over the last 10-15 years, incredible considering its demographics. Yet not suprising considering its investment in social capital....though by no means perfect.

I coudl go on....but i'd rather not cos I just know i've already irked a few flag wavers. Oh well, just planting seeds.

Hmmm....a lot of commentators attribute Ireland's economic performance to the avoidance of regulation i.e. leaving the economy as 'free' as possible. I'm not sure that regulation is exactly a great idea for growth - it usually isn't (not that some isn't necessary or desirable).

The answer is still as simple as "if it's crap, don't buy it, and don't buy anything ELSE from the purveyors of that crap".

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me......

I love being called a fanboy by a ranting whiner who hasn't even played the game yet.

I have my complaints with the game but since 1.3 they are minor IMO. Can we just get a general rule that anybody who hasn't actually played the game should stop complaining until they know what it's actually like?

edit- BTW i'm not happy with the way games are released today but it is ALL games, not just SH. Heck even console games are being patched nowadays. (XBOX LIVE)

Uber Gruber,

Personally, I don't trust regulations to take care of society in the long term:

• because politicians gets re-elected after a fist mandate for results and facts happening during their work period, and not for long term objectives that are rather transparent to the public. In my country, it leads the government to sell buildings that they own since years, and then renting the very same buildings straight after, to have a one-shot big income of money just necessary to claim "look, the budget is OK and healthy, for this mandate". But they won't speak about the raise of recurring costs.
• because big companies of many domains can influence politics: they can tell the government: stop bothering us with those very restricting laws, or we'll just move to another country, where workers are cheaper and where regulations are very interesting to us. Thsoe companies are far from perfect in our eyes, but they still bring something to the economy of countries, offering jobs and paying taxes.
  OK, that does not apply to every type of company: supermarkets are a good example of that, since they can only be where their customers live. But cars, computers, and so many things can be manufactured/developed/engineered anywhere in the world.
• And finally, because many politicians also have shares in companies.

@Barjack

I'm very much with you on the politician front. Their goal is to get re-elected every 5 years say, so they will try to provide short term gain for their public in order to sweeten them up to vote for them again. This is one of the greatest drawbacks of democracy, we have a single voice every five years....its completely non-representative and quite archaic but its better than the alternative of having no say at all (dictatorships, single party systems etc).

Over time, the media puts government dodgy doings into the public spotlight, which in turn causes governments to legislate against themselves, which reduces corruption. England is a good example of this, its pretty hard for a politician to benefit financialy from being a politician whilst they are in office, it still happens but no way to the same degree historically.

The government used to regulate the Bank of England but that power was being abused to manipulate the short term effect of the economy. So now the Bank of England regulates itself, which is a good thing as it has the long term economic interests of the country at stake...not a short term re-election interest. My point I think is that regulation need not come from government, ideally it would come from independant commisions, such as the monopolies and mergers commision, the trading standards commision etc etc. These commisions should simply concentrate on their area of expertise, striving to ensure the long term prosperity in social and economic capital. They would then make recomendations to government who should simply act as a rubber stamping machine and enact them as law in parliament/senate/whatever.

But none of this is possible if the media is unable or restrained from dishing the dirt on corrupt politicians/systems/governments etc. That is why it is essential to have a media that is independant and not at risk of manipulation by its owners....unfortunately, there are a number of players in the media world who seem intent on hoovering up media outlets (tv/radio stations, print media etc and using them to achieve their own goals. These are not examples of free press......:nope:

Alas, thank god for the BBC and Al Jazeer:up:

try turning "imagination" on- it might help
 

I like SH4 very much!
my feel is that we should look at sub simulations as computer games, not a real battlefild or something- IMO there is always a need to use some imagination during playing sessions- do you remamber time, when we used to play silent service or,later, aces of the deep? there is a huge gap in realism between those games and sh3 or sh4. to make myself clear- sh3 and sh4 are way more realistic than aces or ss, but what would you say if these days of aces of the deep, you could lay your hands on sh4? would you complain that it's not finished or got lack of realism [graph] (per.animation, transparent crew etc.)? i don't really think so, because you would be happy to be able to play such a "perfect simulation"
as sh4.
i think problem with all this lays somewhere else- in our lack of imagination nowdays- games will never be perfect- graphic and realism, and most of all it will never become a reality- so we must accept that fact to be able to have some enjoyment from playing.
when i play sh4, i try to imagine some of the aspect of that "submarine life", to be honest- i'd probably need some time to realize that there is no periscope animation, if i didn't read about it here. but it doesn't matter much, cause this game is givin' me athmosphere and climate of "being there" strong enough just without it.
following your steps, there would show up people who claim that sh4 sucks, becouse there is no animation of officers and crew taking sh@# it the toilet.

if you loose your imagination, or you will lost your passion!

Yike! What a thread!
 

I'm amazed by the "business is the source of all evil, government is the source of all good" stuff. Neither is the source of all anything! However, government, having the power to compel at the point of a gun is the far more dangerous party, so a healthy society will minimize it. (That's the button with the minus sign on the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Unfortunately, congress, parliment, the dictator, choose the choice of your choice has rendered the minimize button inert. Too bad for you).

Similarly, the "open source is the answer to all software problems" crowd is always amusing. Open source SH4 wouldn't be SH4, it could end up being hundreds of SH4's, none of which would be the real SH4. None of them would be compatible either. Or it could be the other way. "The deck gun fires too fast." "The deck gun fires too slow." "Let's just rock the boat and fire it fast." And because of lack of agreement, no game is published at all.

Also, do you want a nice safe program using old hat techniques that are understood so completely that errors are almost non-existent? Fine, play Pong. But if you want a state of the art sub simulator, you're going to have to push the envelope of what is possible. You're going to research new techniques that aren't fully understood because you're just making them up. Somewhere in that tangled web of co-dependencies there is going to be an unforseen conflict or effect. Some bright-eyed player who never coded an alarm clock is going to go into hysterics about how "UNFINISHED" games should never be released. Give me the best you can possibly produce. I'll accept the inevitable cost of being on the bleeding edge. Thank you devs for taking chances.

Folks, a small dedicated group of Romanian developers took a failed franchise out of the hands of an incompetent American development team, and after being made fun of by the world for their audacity, released a revolution in maritime simulation. Criticize the belt buckles if you must, but these guys are the best in the world. What they did should no more be open-sourced than the music of your favorite band. (or favourite band for some of you!) This is the coherent vision of a small dedicated and focused group, not group-think mush. They have earned the right to ownership of the code and it is theirs to do with as they choose. There is no "should" that we have a right to impose on their legitimate sovereignty.

Unfortunately, the same is true of Ubi. Egregious as their behavior has been, the remedy of government intervention is even more egregious. The French experience more than proves that. Nothing wrong with the French, they have just let their government go further in the direction governments naturally go (toward total fallacy) than some of the rest of us. They are paying the price for that and now, to their credit, are making efforts to reverse course. Ubi, for better or worse, is master of their beast. Whatever good the devs have been able to accomplish is because of Ubi.

So, do you like the game at all? Play it! Thank the developers! Do you not like it? Thanks for buying the game and supporting our cause. Now go play something else. I suggest pong. It works perfectly.:rock:

Sure, sure, I agree with most of your statements, but why bring up the "if you dont like it, go and die" attitude again? Its getting equally old as the "whining".

The reason people complain is because they care (as said somewhere else), and if anyone bothers to register at subsim, they are most likely not into Pong.:dead:

This topic has changed so many times my head hurts...

As a former programmer, many, many moons ago (anyone else remember fortran?) I can appreciate the problems of large blocks of code and the pressures placed by management to complete things.

As a consumer, I'm in agreement with others here, spending hard earned money for incomplete software just plain sux!

Currently, as a truck driver, I can also appreciate the hours and lost homelife of the devs on this project. (only 90 hour weeks would be like a vacation for me)

Bottom line... to the devs, great job with what constraints you've had to deal with. To the whiners, take the time to study all the fine work of these modders and fix it yourself. To the modders, thanks for all your effort --- for free--- and sharing all your findings and know how to boot!

What I would love to see happen is the source code released, but since this is unlikely at best, I'm going hunting for my next 100,000 tons.

I don't know how it's be in other countries, but here in Germany I have as a customer the legal rights that an incorrect product is going to be fixed. This right applies here also to software/games, no question if I paid 5Euro or 49Euro for it. I must grant the manufacturer of a broken product twice tries to improve/correct the product.
If thereafter the product is still incorrectly I can reclaim the full purchase price from manufacturer.

I am not sure one has said that business is al evil. But I may have missed the post saying that, as I didn't read all the lines in all the posts. However, I'm sure that several pointed drawbacks of current trends in businesses, which are simply due to the system we live in: capitalism. But several of us also said that it does not only have drawbacks, and it's even is the best system we currently have.

Same for the remark about governments: who said that government is the source of all good stuff?

I think it makes very good sense to say that governments (i.e. those who vote laws, actually) to give reasonable protections to consumers through laws. They're the ones paid to do that. Not everyone on earth is smart enough to protect himself by his only own means (some even need to be protected against themseves!). And in some cases, that would not be even possible, because the balance of powers is... not balanced at all. What can you do, alone, against a big company with huge money means?

And like you said (which is also like Uber Gruber and I said), governments are not only made of idealistic saints without any interests, so it is also necessary to control them.

I agree with Uber Gruber about idenpendant comissions: that's the best we can get. I'm just worried about the funding of those comissions: who shall decide on their funding, on how much money must be put? The government?? The comissions themselves?

And regarding media, I agree it's a good way of control too, but almost all media are somewhat politically engaged. If you compare news from well know media around the world, the way they present the same topic can be very different, and that influence the local public opinion. It's why it can be very easy to drive a country opinion in one direction. In my country, I observed very concrete examples. Ideally, we should compare several sources, and make our own mind. But we don't have enough time, as we already have so many things to do in everyday life. Ideally, we'd have to do so many more things that we can't have the time to do. This is also a reason why we need independant groups to represent and protect ourselves, as citizens, as consumers, as workers....

Great!!!
 

Now here is someone who knows what he is talking about. I have received more useful information from his few posts in this thread than I have received from all the thousands of posts I have read on all the forums I have read.
I bow down to you for having the integrity to tell the truth instead of remaining silent or even lying to protect the parasitic suits who caused SHIV to be released unfinished.
What is wrong with him badmouthing his employer? Because of his employer, I am not buying SHIV. My download speed is 3kb/sec. I cannot have my telephone offline for the DAYS it would take to download the current patch. If his employers do not want to be bad-mouthed, then they should change the way they do business.
Be glad, be VERY glad that there are developers out there who take pride in their work. These are the only ones who will ever produce the games that rate 100. If he had a work ethic similar to the Ubi suits, how much worse would SHIV version 1 have been?
Although I am not buying the game, still I thank you for doing the absolute best you could do in the allotted time.

A person does not have to have the game to know what it is like. All one has to do is read what has been posted by game owners. Even you say " I have my complaints about the game but since 1.3 they are minorIMO." This tells me that after 3 patches the game still has problems. I also know that patch 1.3 is an incredible 200+ megs. Just the size of the patch tells me the game is studded with defects. There is also a movement to demand patch 1.4. This tells me a lot also.
Need the game to know what it is actually like? No.
Do you know why console games are being patched now? It is because they can be. If they could not be, the games would be released when they were finished.....as they were until recently.

I stopped reading after that sentance. :roll:

I tend to agree. This is why there are customer testimonials. But, the proof is in the pudding when you get a chance to play the game.

I'm still having a blast playing SH3. And know what the best thing about it is??? I paid $10 for it BRAND NEW IN THE BOX. For $10, even if the game is a complete dud, at least you don't feel hosed down buying it. I pay more for a pizza, so $10 isn't that big a loss. I just checked Amazon.com and the lowest price I can get SH4 for is $32.51. And that is for a USED version. I'm not gonna whine about SH4 since I don't own it. But I WON'T own it until the price drops down and the modders have had a chance to fix the problems that Ubi has given up on. That may be a year or more, but I have SH3 to enjoy during that time. My :up: goes to the modders who will finally fix SH4.

Dep

No doubt playing the game is the best way to know what it is like. The best way not to waste your money is to pay heed to customer testimonials. I have learned this by buying several games without reading any testimonials. I always find that the overall tone of testimonials is pretty close to what I think of the game.

Not buying yet?
 

You're missing a lot of fun. It was fun out of the box. It is more fun now at v1.3. I can't say it's better than SH3, They are very different situations that deserve to stand on their own merits. Suffice it to say that they are absolutely the two BEST sub sims on the planet! You have my sympathy however. Anyone can overpay for something. It is much more fun and challenging to buy it cheap. I wouldn't give up but keep trying the eBay method. I bought mine for $15.00 a month ago. I paid full price for SH3 and am still satisfied!

I paid near on 50 Euro for SHIV......did I get value for money ? Well, not when I bought it as the produc that cam out of the box was worth no more than 10 to 12 euro at most. However, now, 5 months later and with patch 1.3 do I now have value for money ? Yes, I think so..not as much value as SH3 but value for money all he same. Has the SHIV purchasing experience been good ? NO, its been a bloody disaster and I can actually say its been the worst game buying experience of my life.....and I used to own an 8K Commodore Pet when I was 14 so i've been through the mill I can tell you.

What have I learnt ? Patience. This one experience has soured the future because I have learnt that I should wait till a game is patched to resonable playability levels. Which is why I still dont own Allied Assault.

Will anyone listen ? I doubt it. But if people like me start holding off from buying games then, well, the inital marketing of a game will have less return from its marketing investment. That means the purse string holders will dispense less on merketing, which means less hype and less control over income for the publishers.

None of this is good news for a publisher.....