The notion of support for the sake of support has gotten what, exactly?

People want u-boats? OK, guess it got that.

Did people really clamor for more fluff eyecandy, though? I'm all for USEFUL eyecandy, mind you. But interiors? Why anyone would hang their hat on interior nonsense is beyond me. How does that help during the required time compression? What USE is it? Do you need to open up floor plates and fix stuff yourself?

Eyecandy people want is better sea and weather. Better and more targets and escorts. Better AI. A realistic paradigm of player as skipper---concentrating on making the firing party better looking, interesting, and interactive would have made FAR more sense than making an engine room you can do NOTHING with other than look at (once, for a few seconds).

Bottom line is that this thing was gelled up before we ever knew for sure it was coming out. Responsiveness to those of us willing to buy just to support the series/genre? Zip.

Maybe someone will make a good age of sail game and I can play that instead (course they'll do the same and dumb down the sim aspects in favor of meaningless eyecandy, too, lol).

I think so. At least, thats what working on a supermod for SH4 has lead me to believe. People will install visually oriented mods over a supermod, regardless of what functionality it might break, and many of those users will install A LOT Of them. I've seen similar behavior in SH3 as well. It's like they can't resist.

True, but sea state, visibility, skins on ships are all stuff you see all the time.

You'll only see the loading animation ONCE likely. You'll see the sea constantly.

If there was a fleet boat internal mod, heck, I'd likely grab it. I'd not USE it much though

I've been posting a bit about the server lately, and I'll probably continue doing it to help set things straight. There isn't going to be a "Silent Hunter 5" server sitting somewhere authorizing the game; it doesn't work like that. Reality is that all games will submit to an Authorization server; that is, Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Silent Hunter 5, and whatever other games will all submit to the same server (or set of servers, each communicating with all games). As such, this makes it unlikely that one day they'll decide to simply stop authorizing on account of cost, as the server impact will be very low.

What you might see is Ubisoft revoke some of the "features" the DRM will offer you -- like cloud-stored savegames. Those games will take up a very real chunk of storage space, and that does cost them money. At some point, SH5 may not be able to save games to the cloud, but you can bet your ass you'll still need to authorize with the server. The reality is that server authorization will eat up so few CPU cycles and such limited bandwidth that the requirement to authorize will never make a reasonable economic impact on them.

In short, your only hope to see the authorization go away is for the DRM to spook so many people away from buying the big titles -- like Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, or Rainbow Six -- to force Ubisoft into dropping the DRM in hopes of boosting sales. Silent Hunter is far too small and inconsequential of an IP for them to care very much if just that game fails; as people say here, they'll just drop the series if it doesn't sell well enough.

Tater,

If your lurk on these forums enough (SH3 through SH5), you'll notice that people are VERY nitpicky over the smallest visually oriented items. Infact, its often at ridiculous lengths. The watchword here is "immersion", and immersion seems to be defined by what they can see visually, first and foremost. Technical details is only a secondary thought, if not an freaking afterthought.

I honestly think the devs were watching the community here, and made exactly what they were clamoring for. More RPG via "The Das boot experience" (everyone seems to want to live the movie), and more "immersion" as defined through visual graphics.

You are probably correct. I tend to see the visual stuff the way I see everything related to SH—does it increase or decrease the quality of simulation?

What is immersive for me is to have the targets, sub, world, and enemies behave realistically (and look appropriate).

I remember seeing mod changelogs with stuff about the uniforms, etc, and chuckled 'cause I'd paid as much attention to my XO's hat as I do to any guy's shoes I meet in RL—which is none at all. My wife, OTOH, she'd notice stuff like that.

tater

PS—yes, I'm saying that anyone who notices uniform problems probably pays a lot of attention to men—not that there's anything wrong with that! ;)

Yeah, I wish, man.

Although I think I would lose it the first time some jughead started nitpicking some extremely minor detail. Like the chart table was 2 cm too high.

Nitpicking something like a chart table BEFORE the game is finished is a good thing, IMO.

Imagine if every interior was blogged on a forum. The modeler would never even have to look at google or his library. Some goon here would—in real time—slam the dev with images to use to get it right.

Well naturally, who looks at the XO? The navigator's the hot one.

i hope it gets some great mods so i can buy it when i get a job (if that ever happens)

DRM isnt really an issue for me, my internet is always up and i dont usually play games for an extended period.... ie, blow through game in a week and not play again for months.

software piracy is killing the PC game market that i know. just browsed Alien Vs Predator on TPB and over 12,000 people are trying to pirate that game.. what a shame.

at the end of the day you cant blame DRM only the pirates that make it necessary. You might "vote with your wallet" but that is a small loss compared to the masses that would just pirate the game by the tens of thousands.

I want it to succeed, I want DRM to die
 

I want SH5 to be the premier sub sim, the best sim EVAR!!!!. I want ubi to pull their heads out of their asses though when it comes to requiring a single player game to be online all the time. That is just dumb, and knocks many people out of the market, not due to their choice but do the choice of their government that decides to not run cable for internet use in specific areas.

I want SH5 to get upgraded, get add on boats, and add on years. I want it to kick Flight Simulator 2004's ass in the number of copies bought. (and I love flight sim dearly).

I want crap like DRM, Star Force, and other such nonesense to die a quick and painful death.

Oh and Tater, who asked for a subsim in the first place? Frankly I did want to have the whole boat to roam, the fact you can do nothing in the engine room is just you being negative. It is a start. They have got the frame work, now perhaps in later installments they will have some more functionality. For all you know with this current incarnation you may be able to talk to the Diesel mechanic to address issues with your boat's performance, ala, the scene between the capatain and Johan in Das Boot.

Please stop being such a buzzkill when it comes to what is most likely going to be a very ground breaking subsim.

I personally like eye candy especially when it comes to a simulator of something I shall never get to experience, if it is only a very small part of the experience.

I'm not so sure that the DRM will be removed later. Can happen, but too risky for me to bet.

For SH3, if my memory serves me right, they took the game EXE modified by a pirate group and distributed it in the later, cheaper version. The DRM was completely local. Or maybe it was for SH4, I don't recal. Also, I've no idea if it's true as I didn't check myself when I had read that.

I'v read (didn't check personally either, I don't own that game) that for Bioshock, the DRM removal consisted in asking Securom activation servers to always reply "Allow". Meaning that there is no restriction anymore on the amount of activations, except that activation servers are required to be online and able to reply for that game. The DRM was actually not removed.

So, for those two cases I've heard about, the solution was "easy", no actual game code change.

I've read about the case of Rise of Flight here, and that one implied changes to the game code.
Similarly, removing OSP would require changes in the code of the game.
That's very possible to do, but that's not as simple as what was done for SH3 or Bioshock. Aslo, to make people happy, they would need to develop a way to download online savegames, so you can continue them locally, I imagine.
That kind of code change can happen while a game is still "supported" by its developers, meaning when they can still work on the game code. And changing the code, like always, has a cost.

Interesting reading on the subject of DRM removal:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1680
This is actually on authorization servers, but arguments can easily be extended to several DRM schemes.

Neal, I didn't ask for "SH5: The Das Boot Experience". I didn't ask for an RPG crew management game.

SH5 marks a complete shift in direction of the SH series. Thus you cannot compare SH5 to any previous SH game, because the previous games were essentially the same concept, differing only in setting. They appealed to the same style of gamer. It is no secret that SH5 aims to appeal to a broader style of gamer.

With SH5, Ubisoft's and my idea of a good subsim appears to no longer be the same. And if SH5 is the future direction of the SH series, then I don't care if the series dies. I have no intention of bankrolling a product that doesn't meet my idea of a good subsim. If I want a crew management simulation, I just put on my suit and go to work. Much more "immersion" there and my "crew" are much more interactive (although I do wish I had the "thought bubbles" sometimes).

Now, you say it's not about loyalty, yet you continue to say that we should buy the game to support the series (implied by your continued "if people didn't support SH2 there'd have been no SH3" comparisons - a comment which I disagree with btw, unless you had a crystal ball, but that's a topic for a different time). But isn't that just demonstrating product loyalty? :hmmm: So, are you looking at toasters too? :O:

Don't get me wrong, in 6/12/24 months if I see modders returning the game to what my idea of a subsim is, I will buy it and gratefully thank the modders for their hard work and dedication.

In the meantime, however, maybe those that want to show loyalty to the series by buying SH5 regardless of what they think of it, just so that there can be an SH6 (and I'm not talking about buyers that genuinely want to buy SH5 because they like what they see), can buy two or three copies each. That should cover the rest of us. Everyone wins then. :up:

Randomizer covered the rest of my thinking so well, that I won't reiterate it.

Only a foolish company takes such a risky step with this DRM without the option to remove it if need be. I`m pretty certain that UBI talked about this in the boardroom and have the emergency backup ready to scrap this particular DRM if sales are drastically affected.

SH4 was going to fail...this was no surprise to many of us, right?

And it was not only due to bugs...the STRATEGY didnt fit the exspectations. Many players waited for SH3 v2.0 and NOT for a pacific theater. So the game sold badly. Clear to me. If they would have done it the other way round...SH4 with a better looking atlantic theater AND monsun boats...and AFTERWARDS release the u.s. subwar in pacific theater as an addon...this would have worked better!!! 100% sure.

So, please feel not that offended by the discussion here. It is obvious, that ubi mostly make decisions without customers - bad idea. So i dont understand anybody here, who defends ubi with their silent hunter series...uhhh, if ubi wouldnt do, nobody would.

:nope:

This is crap. The simulation genre is still very well alive and many still want to play such games. So there would have been another studio, creating an inofficial follower. And if not, the community would have done a GWX4, which might have been better, than SH5 at the actual state!!!

And if you place this kind of DRM on top... What to do, as a customer? Swallow the blue pill and go buying this half baked DRM game, only to get SH6??? lol. This cant be meant serious, Neal.


Nothing to add on this...beside: the DRM is the major reason. Unconsidered wishes from the community are another.

right...i praised this for month. also wrote it to officials from ubi...no reaction. suckers...

:88)