So a person (me) who pledged over $1700 and got less than 1/3rd of what was promised to me is supposed to now support a DCS style model..... ummmmm no thanks. DCS will never be on ANY hard drive or remote drive or network drive I ever own!!! They ripped me off for well over $1000 and NEVER delivered what they promised!!

As far as the Squad guys with Kerbal they always gave me more than what I paid for. So yeah I will support people who are passionate over people who are just looking to make a profit anyday!!!! And that is what DCS has become.. I mean really $200 plus for some of the modules they offer. lol
I can get a flight in a real F18 here in Madison, Wi at Truax Airport for that price.

The fact that it has been shown they ripped people off for thousands of dollars yet fanboy/girls still keep singing the praises is beyond my comprehension! However I am glad some people are getting enjoyment off MY $$$ because I never will.

-deicide

Developer vs Publisher
 

Although I don't know the details and probably never will, SH5 seems like the perfect example of a publisher forcing their developer to put out a game before it is completed. All of the bugs that are in the game just make it so apparent that the build is more like an alpha or beta build - mostly feature complete but in need of testing. This happens so much with Ubisoft that I don't know how they are still a company. I really wish they would go out of business and sell off all of their licenses. Then again EA would probably buy up all of their studios and licenses and EA isn't all that great either.

Of course all of this is terrible because a developer, game designer, artist, or anyone actually working on the project wants it to be the best that it can be and have players enjoy the experience and have fun. I think if you read any comment section of a developer site like Gamasutra you will see that people are in the video game industry because they love making games and don't want to be forced to put out buggy crap that player's don't like.

I still think that if there is a strong enough will to do a WW2 subsim game than it could be made independently through crowd funding. As a game designer, military veteran, and WW2 armchair historian I would sprint at the chance to work on this type of project (as I've said in many posts). It would just be an immense undertaking that couldn't be done alone.

You paid for nothing, what you did was risk your money on a Kickstarter campaign rather than waiting for a released product that would have cost a fraction of that. I've never paid more than $40 for any module, hell their premier A10-C, FC3 and BS2 products are $16 each atm so who is getting ripped off exactly and where are these $200 modules?

Its 2015 now and its plain that Ubisoft are done with Silent Hunter, (And likewise many Silent Hunter fans are pretty much done with Ubisoft.)
Ubisoft killed it just by being Ubisoft - impatient and stubborn with customers and even with their own developers, of course if you asked them, I'm sure they would give you a politicians speech with lots of finger pointing to external market forces. Because at Ubisoft "Its everyone elses fault" is virtually the company motto.

I hope for a new Subsim too, but from another developer, its high time for someone else to take shot at it. Silent hunter kind of needed to die to make that more likely.
I'm quietly hopeful as WWII themed games seem to be making a bit of a come back at the moment. The market for a good Subsim might be too modest in size for the likes of Ubisoft, but its certainly isn't for other developers who know how to work it.
The main problem is perhaps dealing with the slow pacing that comes with submarine warfare, that puts a spanner in works for having submarines included in a fast paced brawler MMO like WT or WOW, but something with two layers like Heroes and Generals could be make to work possibly.
Its probably just a matter of time, i'd expect we would see something before the end of this decade, but its just impossible to say where/who it would come from.

WOTA looks good, but its still a Mobile platform / Indy game with just one (very passionate) guy working on it, I wouldn't hold huge expectations, it looks like it will be a very nice addition to sub sims - but its probably not going to be the game that single handedly replaces the Silent Hunter franchise.

FINALLY I can use this! :D

:haha::haha:

If you want a better subsim, you need to put a group together similar to the ATAG group for Il-2 Cliffs of Dover and the BDG group with BOBII: Wings of Victory.

They were given access to the code to make improvements, squash bugs, add more realistic physics. etc.

The work those 2 groups are doing is amazing.

I was involved in putting a group together that was modding Fighter Squadron:SDOE and we wound up with the same arrangement with ParSoft. Some of the work we did was reviewed in PC Pilot and our aircraft flight characteristics were called the most realistic of any sim at the time. We had access to the game and physics code and made some great improvements. We were however, not given access to do more than minor modifications to the graphic engine or we could have taken the game much farther. (yes, RFB was not the first time I'd put a team together, but not having access to fix problems in the game code did limit what people were capable of)

So if you want a better subsim, this is what you'll need. Talk ubisoft into letting a team work on the code from SH4 and SH5 and turn the modders loose by giving them a better physics engine, graphics engine, and ships to work with that have been created for the community by members of the community.

LSH3 GWX DVD
 

I would rather see you tech guys produce DVD's for GWX and LSH3 with all the bugs removed. I would gladly buy one or both

Welcome to SubSim jimislander :sunny:

Welcome aboard
 

That isn't possible, as swdw just laid out in non-specific detail.

One thing about SH3/GWX that drove me to SH4 was that in that game, if you dare save submerged, within range of any contacts, within x miles of shore, not facing Mecca, whatever, you would get a corrupted save and lose your entire career. The longer you go never forgetting this, the more certain that your next save is going to be done in a hurry and there goes your three earth month long career.

You can fix GWX till the cows come home (the original crew did just that) and you can never touch the deal killer bug. It is contained within the untouchable executable files of the game. Unless and until Ubi releases the game code itself for modification, a fix is impossible.

As the Krazyfrenchman revolt days over at Ubi forums showed, Ubi is not a company which allows the wishes of its customers get in the way of doing whatever it wants. The things they do well, and which make them obscene amounts of money are not simulations. They have what they consider are larger fish to fry but still have no advantage to surrendering control of their intellectual property in releasing SH3 and SH4 game code.

With Ubi it's all about the money. The reason they produce games is money, not the love of games, not the creative release, not pride of accomplishment, just the inflow of lots of cash. What produces the cash they will do. What doesn't (simulations) they will walk away from without regard for the people who play it.

RR, check your PM inbox :03:

Done, thank you, and correction to my first post, Ubi has released some game code to modding teams for their IL2 franchise so maybe they can be persuaded here too. Best of fortune to swdw and Neal. I'm willing to help in any way I can.

I look at SHO Beta ... and I just don't know... after buying SH 2,3 and 5... and being left hanging, I'm not sure I want to support any more of their ventures/products... :shifty:

I especially can't believe they are using flash, when major computing companies are calling for it's demise. And then, I look at the micro-transaction model they are using and to me it seems awful expensive for a rather poor looking GUI, and to some extent the implementation of their real-time model. I guess they figure that is cheaper than a thin client. :-?

If I was a betting sailor, I'd say SHO will be SHOffline within the year.

Ubisoft, it looks like a lot of submariners have a long memory. You should have never impaled us (to put it nicely) in the first place. :down:

I wish someone, somewhere, would make a decent sub sim but I guess there is just no money in it. :wah:


I just don't know... :hmm2:

Silent Hunter Online is more of an offshoot. I wouldn't confuse it nor associate it with the games that have come before it.

Silent Hunter Online was pretty much cancelled and its funding halted few years back. Its not been developed since and is probably still online only to give Ubisoft a bit of pocket money from those who still spend money playing it. I guess they need to try and recoup as much money back as they can. I think they realised early in the beta that the potential audience for the game was not going to bring them a return in money and so cut their losses and pulled the plug.