You make valid points, Karl, but the real answer to your question is marketing. The fact of the matter is that 95 percent of the people who purchase this game, will never look for a forum such as this and will never patch or mod the game at all. That's a fact. Most of the people who are regulars at this and similar forums, are smart , demanding customers and are much needed in order to keep prodding companies like UBI to keep their standards up. But I have a friend who runs windows 98 and SH2. Yes SH2!!! He never modded SH2 at all, but he continues to really enjoy playing it and will only consider SH3 when it costs about $10 in the bargain bin. He won't mod it either. To me, he's insane, but he represents the norm not me. He's the guy that UBI are pitching at, only they hope he'll buy it at the $40 value. Forums like this represent a small focus group to companies like UBI, where some of our ideas are considered, if they can be achieved quickly and cheaply, but anything that requires any level of investment of time or money simply won't happen. That's why the modders are so important to us, the five percent who want the game to be the best that it can be. SH4 is now under way, and it will be here in the Spring of 2006. It will in my opinion be marginally better than SH3 patched to 1.4 at the time of release.
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