Smoke on the horizon!

https://www.facebook.com/Destroyerth...18981176396963

I do not use Facebook but I guess this means that the demo release is inminent.

These are really good news. This is one of the few sims that are in the top of my list for 2021. :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:
Thanks for the heads up

Yeah thanks!

I wonder how I’ll do with ASW. Sounds fun :)

Looks very interesting!

Hello everybody

unfortunately, I have some sad news to share. Upon reviewing the demo build that we were preparing for the Steam Festival, our investor came to a conclusion that the game is too realistic, too difficult for mainstream / casual players, and that we have to postpone the demo release until October in order to make it more approachable for the general public.

This news has just been announced to the dev team and myself 10 minutes ago, and I am sharing it here so that you get to know that too as soon as possible.

I am very sorry about what transpired and we will do our best to make it up to everybody who was waiting for our demo. We will look into the possibility of making the demo available somehow (outside of steam festival) so that people who are interested to play it will actually be able to try it out soon.

In the meantime, I will do my best to both make the game more approachable for casuals, while, at the same time, I will do everything to prevent dumbing down and simplifying it in any way.

Please keep your fingers crossed and accept my sincere apologies on behalf of the whole Destroyer team.

Thank a lot for the heads up!! I really appreciate it.

Being a Single player game I guess it should be possible to provide different levels of difficulty so you can keep the casual players happy while at the same time attracting the hard core players.

In my particular case I like the challenge of a realistic ASW game but of course taking into account that in a WWII DD the crew was around 300 people and there should be some functions „automated“ so one single player can manage the workload.

The demise of some WWII naval surface games as for instance PT Boats Knits of the Sea was that they pretended to make a simplified „all public“ game but that neither attracted the casual gamers and surely anoyed the PT Boats fans that expected something more realistic.

Please keep it as realistc and challenging as possible. Hunting and destroying a submarine in WWII with a DD was a hard and difficult task unless you were the USS England :03:

I guess being a single player title you can define „dificulty“ levels.

Thanks for the heads up!!
Looking forward for the demo when it is ready !!!!

Sorry to hear!
I hope you'll find a good middle way that will suit both your (and most of us subsimmers) vision and the investors idea.

The tutorial videos looks fantastic by the way! Very impressive!

Whoa !!! I have not seen those videos before. Thanks for the tip.

I have to say that what I have seen on the videos is just the level of complexity I was hoping for.:Kaleun_Applaud:

If the U-Boat AI skipper are smart enough so they do not become easily predictable, this could be a dream.

Be sure I am now "extremely excited" about this sim.

Different realism levels seem to be the way to go. One level for the original realism intention, one simplified level for the action kids.


Oh, and somebody please tell the investor to come over to these our forums so that we can seat him on the right horse.

Haven't seen the games intro page.

But I thought there would be a section called realisme-settings.

Where you can chose from Expert to Novice

If I buy the game I want it as real as possible.

Edit
Reading these words
"our investor came to a conclusion that the game is too realistic, too difficult for mainstream / casual players"
Made me wonder-What type of game will hit the desktop...something where only realism is the destroyer.
End edit

Markus

A naval game that is realistic, complex, and challenging will always have legs and more prestige than simplified games. I'm hoping any changes to the simulation model will be towards a user friendly interface and not sacrificing fidelity.

A pity that the investor seems to think that 50,000 potential customers are wrong in their evaluation of your game.

"We are pleased to inform you that Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter has reached 50 000 wishlists on Steam! This is a great result, we are grateful for your trust and we won’t disappoint you!"

They should let you do what the Aircraft Carrier Survival guys are doing release a short version of the game as it stands a free 'prologue' and fine-tune the complexity based upon user feedback to that. That way users ultimately get the game they actually want rather that what investors think they want.

Ask them..."How many other Playway games are sitting with 50,000 wish listings?"

Such a shame!

If this ends up being a quasi arcade game rather than a simulation, I'll be taking it off my wish list, unfortunately...

I was so looking forward to this one :(

Hello everybody,

thank you for all the kind words. Please rest assured that I will not allow the game to be dumbed down. I have not been working on it for so long just to let it all go to waste because someone at Playway QA obviously doesn't know how to read the compass :k_confused:

That being said, we will now focus on providing a full-blown, interactive tutorial that will explain both the general premises of ASW, as well as how to play the game itself.

All the simplifications that we are going to introduce will be optional. You will be able to pick and choose which components of the game you would like to handle yourself, and which you would like to have automated (that especially applies to the DRT, the OSC, and the TRR).

Either way, we sincerely hope that once we make our demo public, the community will help us adjust the nuts and bolts of the difficulty level so that the game can be enjoyed both by sumsim veterans (in 'hardcore mode', where you control everything yourself) and by 'action kids' (in 'easy mode', with much less emphasis on plotting, thinking, and other boring crap like that :Kaleun_Wink:).

In summary, please keep your fingers crossed, and we will do our best to show as much of the game as possible to make it up for the missing demo.

Great news :yeah:

I think is this a wise approach. Also if it serves as example in Dangerous Waters while commanding the FFG, you needed to rely in some „crew auto“ support.
Depending on the tactical situation the CO should focus in fighting his ship instead of just micromanaging each station. Specially in complex and fluid scenarios.
So in my case I like the posibility of jumping into the TMA or the Sonar station and do the work there myself for a while to get a more precise picture but at the same time when the situation requires that, I move to the CIC to make tactical decision and I let the Auto crew to support me when necessary.

I think a similar approach would not only allow „non hard core players“ to play the sim in an easy way but also allow hard core players to make the most of it by deciding when to jumop to any station and doing all that station work themselves or when to take the CO role and use the support of your crew to run your ship systems.

In real life a CO, is not seating on the sonar station himself all the time. He has an specialist to do the job.
I like to have the option to jump into the sonar and do the job myself but I also like to have the option of having some Auto crew function to continue doing that job while I am in another station.

Of course the performance of the AI crew should be „average“ so they are never better or more precise than a human player and using a full AI crewed ship should never give an advantage over a competent human player.

In my oppinion it worked quite good in Dangerous Waters and it could be a good approach here as well.

Looking forward for the demo and follow up release !!!:salute: