Ubisoft: 'We want to improve our relationship with PC gamers'
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ubiso...gamers/0111333

Maybe someone should point Stephanie.Perotti@Ubisoft.com in this direction to test if they are serious or just making throw away comments.

Personally I love the silent hunter. When I bought the first copy years ago, this was an accident by they way and it me took several attempts at playing before I found I was hooked.

Looking back I ask myself what was it about the sim that reeled me in, it was the western approaches and the North sea. The shallows where uboats first operated that had me hooked. Without the added feature of ocean depth the only survival technique was stealth on the continental shelf around the British Isles where the waters may only be 50 meters deep, this is the challenge I personally find alluring, how those men did this amazes me.

Of coarse this will be different for everyone who plays, some may like the big convoy attacks and diving further than anyone has yet managed and survived. Again the excitement can be addictive taking your boat down another 30 meters when your already at 175 m. Then there are the spy drops, photo ops etc etc, but it really does't go a lot further as far as scenarios go, personally speaking.

Seems to me a complete rethink is needed for SH, a fresh set of minds to capture a new and daring generation of Captains into the service. The big failure of SH5 is the lack of the type IXC of coarse, it's probably Ubi's single biggest mistake, I always hoped for an addon to be released but Ubi had already cut their cloth as it were and that's exactly what I mean by a rethink of production and marketing, the lack of imagineering. If you what to know what SH5 should have been, load up SH4 with Uboat missions along with Lurkers Operation Monsun mod and try crossing the Bay of Biscay in 1943, you'll understand what I mean. This is how SH5 should have been, difficult and hard core. Ubi could have done a lot worse if they had offered Lurker a place on their thinktank before launching SH5.

I now only use two mods on SH5, Dynamic Enviroment and a little enhancement put together myself to improove the type VII using some od Sobers seaworthy mods and SteelVikings interiors, these give me the playability I like. I hope there will be another generation of Silent Hunter, but without some clear and fresh thinking it will be pointless sad to say.

ok too much wine tonight, but im gunna lash out anyway...
i think im a perfect demographic for SH franchise. but the online requirement gig just killed me. i worked [then] in a place of very poor internet, there was no way i couldve sustained a constant reasonable line to get into SH. i utterly adored SH3, was wasted by the pointlessness of bad antisub of IJN inherant in PTO SH4 and couldnt wait till SH5.
by the time my work situ settled, and even when SH5 ? lost its internet req, it was too late. there was so much modding going on [which is awesome, please please please dont stop that] i was just lost and didnt know where to start?
i love campaigns, i love the 'immersion' that i think [at least till WW2 tank sims wake up] only subsims [SH3-modded] give. i think ubisoft killed opportunities by their on-line requirement, and alienated a % of its customers [regardless of their motives, im one of them!].
to me the magic of subsims is that to a sub cmdr [especially a ww2 uboat commander, no matter how many boats were supposed to be in his wolfpack] he still operated on his own. he made the point of attack and the cunning escape a recipe of his own. modded, it was seriously PLAUSIBLY realistic! i think, modded, SH3 caught that; and its what vanilla subsims should aim for.
i have missed SH5. i regard this as tragic. im not in the generation of computer fluency, i struggle with simple stuff and despite having an IRL life altering occupation, cant be assumed to have simple knowledge of computers. i need an utter IDIOTS spell-it-out guide to manipulate mods.
i look fwd to SH6, or perhaps its intricately explained modded SH5 offline version that eludes me.
i am an end user. i am a subsim fan. this was my voice. that was my 'soapbox'.
cheers to you all.

A big step in improving their relations with my tiny little part of the PC community would be sell me something I can play. No stupid DRM, no having to log in to something like uplay, I can find communities to game with on my own (hello subsim.com!), I just want to buy the game and play it.

I'd have been really happy with a type VII sim, even just restricted to say a VIIC, to me the big failure (once you get past all the release issues, DRM and bugs) is the entire campaign layer. They had some awesome examples of good campaigns coming from the modders in SH3 and SH4, GWX and RFB + RSRDC are my favorites, but each of them has several quality options, NYGM, Trigger Maru, etc. Yet with all of this awesome work done for free by the community, they give us something that is really a console style series of achievements.

The modders have been heroic on SH5 and gave us something more than playable but I'm still finding SH5 kind of hollow and drifting back to SH3.

What I'd love to play:

An SH3+(megamod) style campaign / career on SH5 with Sober's mod list and all the goodies, real nav, scripting, etc. I realize that mix is too hardcore for most of the non-subsim community, but realism can be tweaked to make it as easy as one would want.

Future Sub Sim
 

Get back to basics. GREAT visual details. Harbors, coast lines, weather, waves, realtime damage models that vary with each time you play a mission.
AI that actually works correctly. Never mind talking to crew members to make them feel good, running around the ship, picking specific crews, writing logs, etc.
Make things like saving games and returning to campaigns that actually work. STICK TO BASICS AND MAKE THEM OPERATE CORRECTLY.

If Ubisoft can't or won't fix their game and all they are worried able is DRM, piracy, and locking the software on their online servers, forget about them.

Dig up ACES OF THE DEEP or SILECT SERVICE - do a 21th century upgrade and roll it out. Competition will fix or sink UBISOFT

Would love a new simulator, a good one for once, good graphics and good gameplay, and make it look real..its jsut a dream but it should be possible. SH5 graphics in SH3 game would be a good one.
-Captain Theodor

Hollow is a good description and about how I feel. Even in the shallow waters there is not enough tension to go round, I find myself Submerging and going out for an hour or two, only to take it up when I return, I have left it running all night before now. But no matter how I try to break away from this sim, I seem to return to Kiel and re-enlisting. :up:

...come back and fix SH5. actions speak louder than words.

Angry email now sent :)

I vote for, "throwaway comment". Ubisoft's actions indicate that it will maintain its current course of action, much to the consternation of all PC games, not just us. I feel as if they have just written all of us off.

SH6
 

why dont thay make a submarine game on current times sending missles in land and nukes taking on other subs dog fighting under the sea even with ships that can be controlled think a sh5 style where u can walk around and go to all the stations in the sub would be good and pick your country and start a war be cool

again
 

even better a carrier where u have to train as a torpedo man sound man radio man etc to finally become captain of your own sub or ship lol just hoping and praying a all out naval sim would be the tits

Personally I bet Ubisoft made good money from Far Cry 3 (PC version) above their expectations and someone is trying a weak effort as part of thier career promotion prospects to close a quick gap, tick in the box, sell it internally as a win etc etc.

...but I'll gladly eat my own words if genuine progress is made, show me the olive branch and I'll listen.

Considering how Ubisoft treated players in the past I wouldn't trust anything they have to say now. Wanting to repair their 'relationship' with gamers is nothing more than a desperate attempt to repair their salable image.

They have proven time and again they really don't care about the gamers they profess to respect. So they can cram it as far as I am concerned. :shifty:

Ubisoft
 

The big news on the business side in the last few quarters is console game sales have cratered. Nobody really knows why, though a lot of people are speculating it's because the current generation is so long in the tooth. But Valve is making money hand-over-fist on the PC with Steam, so it's not surprising Ubi wants to set up a competing service.

Reading the article I get the impression they think removing the always-on DRM restriction was a huge concession on their part (remember, this is the company that said 95% of installations were pirated). I didn't see anything that would make me think they were interested in putting more effort into improving game quality at release time.

And for me that's pretty important. Sure, if the game is selling well they'll put out a few patch releases. But if it isn't, those bugs are never going to get fixed and I'm left feeling swindled.