Mikhayl, I can see your point and I really do respect and appreciate what you have done for the subsim community but do you feel that paying full price for half-finished product is appropriate?

I understand that modders will eventually be able to bring this game up to the standards but it brings my original question: What kind of: "let's release it now and have modders finish it" sales practice is it, anyway? :nope:

Okay....you asked :DL

:oops:

Well, we'll see in March, I will agree with that sentiment if SH5 is merely SH3 with updated graphics and some sprinkles, minus 2 years of campaign and 3 subs.

But, if SH5 delivers a great experience out of the box, then you can't call it "unfinished", no matter how limited in scope it will be.
I mean, take the flight sim "Battle of Britain", it only represents 2 months of the war and only has a handful of playable planes, but this is arguably the best WWII sim there is, superior to IL-2 with its myriad of playable planes and campaigns spanning the whole war.

If you think about it, September 1939 to May 1943 represents what, 20, 25 patrols? That's anywhere between 50 and 100 hours of game (conservative estimate), for a single campaign. Then you can restart with another flotilla, make different choices, and so on. If what's in the game is polished, then it's a hit IMO.

I'm not even sure what I think at this point. A part of the line between being elated and disappointed is in what you wanted in the first place. This is a whole new direction, and I'm still puzzling over whether it's the direction I want to go. I'd still like to see SH4 finished, as the earlier SH series is close to the style I like to play. This is difinitely not that direction.

A lot of it looks cool though. I guess I'll just have to find out for myself if I grow to like it.

Sure hope the merchants are easy to name though.

Fair enough, I concede my case until March.
You make good points here but don't you feel a little bit "cheated" by being kept in the dark about the campaign span? I feel like the SHV hype was like a huge bubble and now "poooof" only 1939-1943?

It's the lack of progression that bothers me.

OK, I'm not a serious simmer like most of you here, I'd be perfectly happy with an underwater Doom 3 as I articulated previously.

However, I do want to see some progression and reward for my efforts. In Doom, as the game goes on I can get bigger and better weapons, harder enemies and more cool things going on in general. In SHIII I get new U-Boats, a better crew that I have looked after/promoted etc. and whole different types of ship. It's why I liked the renown and upgrade system of SHIII and got a good ribbing for it here!

With this, sure I might see some new classes of opponents over the 4 years, but aside from a new conning tower or two I'm stuck in the same s**tcan at the end of the war I was at the start and the reward for all my efforts is "Well, we're 2 years away yet, but for you ze war is over. And you're no better off than when you started."

It might be immersing and fun, but it sounds so desperately unrewarding as a campaign that I'm really bothered about it.

At least I don't need to buy a new PC yet.

Now, that is a very good point, too. In SH3 I was looking forward to upgrades and (possibly) upgrading to a new boat.

Thank you Neal!
 

Your questions were perfect and the interview was very charming.

Having seen the new trailer and read the Q & A, I for one am very excited and cannot wait for March to come around. With the state of the economy and the news that Ubisoft are delaying some releases, I feel we're all very lucky to be getting a new Silent Hunter of this quality at all. It is obviously gonna be the greatest sub-sim ever made. It saddens me that some members of this community seem to have an unrealistic sense of entitlement, but that's their problem.

Thank you Dan, Alex and the development team for your tremendous hard work :salute:

A typo.... And would have gotten away with it too if wasnt your meddeling quotes :haha:

I agree that it's an odd choice and a bit of a let down, but after reading the interview the devs have good argument and I trust them to do it right.
Though I would have liked to have the campaign extend to July 1944, basically just after the perilous Channel crossing to retreat to Germany, and the end of the Atlantic bases.
At any rate, it can't possibly worse than the end game in SH3, remember that ridiculous pop-up "the war ended", sure it went to 1945 but DUH.

Regarding upgrades, there's still the different variants + smaller upgrades, and in SH3 the upgrades are important because there's hardly anything else to reward the player, honestly the game is very dry, the background story to immerse the player is weak to non-existent. In SH5 it seems that it will be much more important so that you won't focus on that battery upgrade so much. Well I hope so :)

:up:
My opinion exactly!

I rather have a great campaign spanning only 3 years and just one playable sub, than having a mediocre campaign with a choice between multiple unfinished subs.

Great interview Neal. Answers alot of my questions about the game. I'll be picking it up in March, despite the campaign running through to 43.

I'd put down money on Ubi releasing an expansion for it to cover the rest of the war. It'll just take them a while to tweak the engine enough to cover all the allied tech advances. And of course the modding community will expand the playability long after release.

The whole career and upgrades system of SH3 and SH4 were what kept me going with the games, but this limitation to ONE type and only till 1943 is quite dissapointing. Now you'll probably just get the pop up screen two years earlier than before...

Okay, so they say the campaign can be modified to last longer, which is fine, but what about all the technological advances of both allied and axis? Do modders really have to do that work? Or shouldn't this be part of what we pay for? And the missing uboat types - is it now the job of modders to port over old units from SH3 or SH4? When this should be done allready by the dev team.

I said it before, and I say it again. I still think it's lame. No matter all the other great advances they may have developped sofar. It LOOKS great, but is that really enough? So when you all have played Jürgen Prochnow for ½ year, will SH5 still be appealing like SH3 or SH4 was it? I was at first most impressed of the graphical improvements, but this DOWNGRADE in gameplay variation really make the decision for me: I can wait this time round..... I doubt I'll be first in line to buy it.

Imagine if lots of other potential users think likewise. If only half the potential customers buy it at first at full price, and maybe 25 % buy it later at reduced price and the rest not at all, will SH5 then be considered a succes? Compared to if they give it 6 months more development (to add II, IX and XXI plus 1943-45) and 75 % buy it first at full price and the last 25 % at the reduced price. I think the Ubisoft management shoots itself in the feet by this decision, but only time will tell...

When they announced back in September that the game was out in spring, I thought I didn't hear right. Just one year in development? Impossible. Well, not if you only model one sub and cut out half of the campaign.

Fine by me, I'll consider SH5 a work in progress, we're entering the DLC era anyway. I'm glad I'll be playing the game soon. And as Mihkayl has stated many times before, quality is better than quantity.

SH5 Progression:
-SH5 Battle of The Atlantic: VII-7 till 43
-SH5 Operation Monsoon: IX till late 43 with Indian and American theaters
-SH5 Fall of the Reich: Walter boats and late war suicidal campaign (plus techs for the other boats)

Modding will be tough because all mods will become obsolete with every DLC. But I have absolutely no doubt that all great modders will give their best to make the game a jewel from the start. Players will request, modders will provide. They'll hit road blocks and missing features, just like before. Well this time, Ubi would better listen to them and help them with each new content release. And just in case some of you still have doubts, just look what Lurker has done with his Operation Monsun mod. :up:

will not buy
 

i guess i will not be buying this version as it has only 1 sub model and ends in 1943 and no hot keys this will just be a waste of my money and time i will just stick with gwx3. personally i could care less about high end graphics and 1st person interaction if i wanted that i would get one of those war games where you have to kill aliens or something else.i just want a game where i can play as
a axis or ally in a sub in either side of the world and try to survive the whole war from 1938 to 1945