I give up.

mookiemookie · 03-04-10, 12:43 AM

I hate to pile on with yet another thread about this sort of thing, buuuut....

I've really tried to give this game a fair shake, I really have. But it seems like doing the most basic things that a submarine sim should do is like pulling teeth.

Just maneuvering your boat is a guessing game, what without having a compass or any way to know your current bearing besides looking through the 'scope or UZO and ordering "head to view". There is just no excuse, gameplay or otherwise, to have to do this as a workaround as this kind of info isn't immediately available to you. And once you DO know where you're headed, changing direction is not at all easy. You have to head to your map and drag your waypoint around, or order your rudder hard a port or starboard, and then guess as to when you're on your desired heading and then order it back amidships. WHY? Why oh why does something as basic and simple as maneuvering need to be that difficult?

Do you have enough fuel or battery life left to get where you need to go? Guess and see, or click through 2 menus to just find out how much fuel you have remaining. It shouldn't be that hard.

Your watch crew is deaf, dumb and blind. Trying to intercept a convoy is another guessing game. Your watch crew won't tell you that they've seen anything until you come out of TC yourself, and at that point you're most likely 500 meters from a DD. Good luck guessing when to go back to 1x TC so that this doesn't happen. I suppose it makes sense -in the game there's only 3 men on watch, all of them without binoculars, not the historical 4 or 5. No wonder they can't see anything.

Automatic targeting is like deciphering hieroglyphics. What are the 1, 2, 3, dots for? Who knows?! How do you line them up to get a firing solution? Guess and see! No thanks. Nowhere is it explained how this thing works. The manual devotes about 3 vague sentences to this. You'd think one of the goals of the simulation would warrant more of an explanation.

Manual targeting is not much better. A stadimeter that doesn't reliably tell you range is not much good. And without a proper range reading, you can just toss out the rest of your firing solution because it won't mean anything. Without the tools to do what I need to do - sink ships - then why the heck am I even out at sea?

So now let's say by luck and the grace of God, the stars have aligned correctly for you and you've managed to guess correctly what direction you need to be headed in, you've guessed correctly when you needed to come out of TC to set up an attack, you've guessed correctly the range to your target and you've shot your torpedoes. Now it's time for evasion. Well, hope you're ready for more guessing - this time you need to guess the magic speed you need to be doing to maintain your ordered depth, and of course you've guessed at what depth you ordered because the depth gauge is about 10 pixels high.

Ordering your crew to perform the most perfunctory tasks is another guessing game. Do you have enough "morale points" to order silent running? Guess what!? Your XO is in a cranky mood today so no morale points and no silent running for you, Kaleun! Someone get my Luger. I've got a clip full of morale points for you.

I can see that there was a lot of good ideas that the dev team wanted to do with this sim. But the missing and/or broken parts of it just make it a chore to get basic things done. I should be worried about tactically how to attack this convoy. Not worried about guessing how to perform the basic tasks I need to do in order to get this done. I hope that they're listening to our gripes and will address some of this in a patch. I hope that there are some blessed patient modders who can do something with what we've been given...I'd love them to spend their time adding to the game, not having to fix stuff that should work right in the first place.

I want a sub sim, not a guessing game. Until I have more of the former and less of the latter, I consider firing up SH5 to be an exercise in trying my patience, not an exercise in sinking ships.

CCIP · 03-04-10, 12:47 AM

Another one in a string of what are sadly well-justified posts of critique.

I just hope these posts and not "this game sux" keep getting through so that the developers are aware of what needs to be fixed.

I do partially blame my situational awareness habits in SHIII/IV for disorienting me in SHV, but there's no question that some of the functionality should've never been changed.

Ah well. I don't yet despair. There's always older titles to go back to while waiting on this one to kick its' biggest issues (most notably morale).

Herr Graf · 03-04-10, 12:52 AM

Yeah but dude,
the water looks awesome!!

*runs and ducks*

Steeltrap · 03-04-10, 12:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Herr Graf

Yeah but dude,
the water looks awesome!!

*runs and ducks*

(Sadly, that's part of the problem; people saying things like that and MEANING them.)

Turbografx · 03-04-10, 01:01 AM

How can you not think this is the best game in the series!1?!?one?

You must be blind. This is so much better than SH and AoD, I mean, just LOOK at the graphics! Learn 2 videogame...

*sarcasm off*

vonce1 · 03-04-10, 12:59 AM

many good points..good post

gutted · 03-04-10, 01:03 AM

epic post.

I hope the devs see it.

Steeltrap · 03-04-10, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CCIP

Another one in a string of what are sadly well-justified posts of critique.

I just hope these posts and not "this game sux" keep getting through so that the developers are aware of what needs to be fixed.

CCIP, surely you don't think the Devs, who have spent time with SubSim members and posted on these boards, have any doubt as to what needs fixing? How could they not know??

Consider a fundamental thing like navigation. Fact is, especially during tracking, approach and attack, the captain would order VERY specific courses based on what was known of the enemy's speed and track. That's just "Submarine attack 1.01". You can, and probably have (I have), read it in any number of books by people who were there and did it. For them to have left it in the state people are saying they have is quite extraordinary. Even so, they can hardly be unaware of it, unless they are completely clueless about how subs operated in WWII.

CCIP · 03-04-10, 01:06 AM

Oh absolutely. I'm not arguing against that. You CAN get that information in the game, just that it's not how we're used to it and, ahem, not exactly completely logical. I will totally agree that the design of the interface is rather poor for anyone who expects to play with anything but simplified settings where instrumentation and solid grasp on situational awareness don't matter. As I said elsewhere, I think it's important to acknowledge that part of the issue is our own "old" SHIII/IV situational awareness habits, but the current interface couldn't be any less helpful in this.

Steeltrap · 03-04-10, 01:13 AM

I, for one, have never understood why you can't simply hit a command (let's say 'N') whereupon a box pops up and you input 3 digits for the course you want.

'N'
'135'
response = new course 135; coming to 135 or whatever you like.

How hard can it be? Isn't it what all the books and real ex-navy guys keep saying what happens??

It's just symptomatic of the game industry, I'm afraid. It's ironic that the mindblowing abilities of PCs compared with 10 years ago are coinciding with incredibly poorly written, poorly tested dross as games.

CCIP · 03-04-10, 01:18 AM

The fact is that well... someone, somewhere, imagined that people like clicking shiny buttons for very generic orders.

Clearly, that's resulted in an outcome that players of a more serious breed can't approve of.

I think the game's design went way, way too far in pushing the whole "you are the captain, you don't have your hands on the dials" point, forgetting one other, EXTREMELY important fact about a captain: yes your hands are off the buttons, but as the captain you NEED to be precisely aware of the situation and have a chance to respond to it with precise orders. Especially on the awareness front, the way the game is presented just won't cut it. Also as the captain, you NEED to have a way to make sure that your crew gets things done, NOW. Without having to go up in their face and "dialogue" them or pat them on the bottom.

Unless, of course, you play with external camera, map contacts and auto aim... then you don't need that precision and timely-ness and can leisurely see everything from your mini-map perch.

Instant, crucial situation info (from course to nearest contact) needs to be back within a click's or keystroke's reach. Same goes for virtually all orders that would be issued by voice command or mechanical input on a real military unit.

Adriatico · 03-04-10, 05:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CCIP

I do partially blame my situational awareness habits in SHIII/IV for disorienting me in SHV, but there's no question that some of the functionality should've never been changed.

"Noise bar" and "U-boat mark" on surface are must have

Why they have to take out the best gameply parts from SH3 ?

Galanti · 03-04-10, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adriatico

"Noise bar" and "U-boat mark" on surface are must have

Are you serious? That's the first thing that gets modded out. And U-mark is still there, on top off all the other childish console grabage added to the UI.

Decoman · 03-04-10, 08:14 AM

It would be nice to see some hints in game as to how a submarine is understood to be either silent or noisy.

The game now has some info displayed about the two periscopes, and I liked learning this. It said something like that the observation periscope was more suitable for night time operations. I wonder if this is a functionality that is reflected with the options given to the player in this game.

The ekstra info in-game, about various technologies would only really make sense if this can be adequately represented in a simulated environment like the silent hunter games.

Perhaps the wording is critical. Instead of saying "The attack periscope bla bla", it should say "In ww2, the attack periscope on german u-boats were bla bla". Hinting at some limitation, and not insinuating that something is really simulated in-game.

609_Avatar · 03-04-10, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

...Your XO is in a cranky mood today so no morale points and no silent running for you, Kaleun! Someone get my Luger. I've got a clip full of morale points for you.

I'm sorry, but that just cracked me up big time!

03-04-10, 12:43 AM	#1
mookiemookie Navy Seal Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 9,404 Downloads: 105 Uploads: 1	I give up. I hate to pile on with yet another thread about this sort of thing, buuuut.... I've really tried to give this game a fair shake, I really have. But it seems like doing the most basic things that a submarine sim should do is like pulling teeth. Just maneuvering your boat is a guessing game, what without having a compass or any way to know your current bearing besides looking through the 'scope or UZO and ordering "head to view". There is just no excuse, gameplay or otherwise, to have to do this as a workaround as this kind of info isn't immediately available to you. And once you DO know where you're headed, changing direction is not at all easy. You have to head to your map and drag your waypoint around, or order your rudder hard a port or starboard, and then guess as to when you're on your desired heading and then order it back amidships. WHY? Why oh why does something as basic and simple as maneuvering need to be that difficult? Do you have enough fuel or battery life left to get where you need to go? Guess and see, or click through 2 menus to just find out how much fuel you have remaining. It shouldn't be that hard. Your watch crew is deaf, dumb and blind. Trying to intercept a convoy is another guessing game. Your watch crew won't tell you that they've seen anything until you come out of TC yourself, and at that point you're most likely 500 meters from a DD. Good luck guessing when to go back to 1x TC so that this doesn't happen. I suppose it makes sense -in the game there's only 3 men on watch, all of them without binoculars, not the historical 4 or 5. No wonder they can't see anything. Automatic targeting is like deciphering hieroglyphics. What are the 1, 2, 3, dots for? Who knows?! How do you line them up to get a firing solution? Guess and see! No thanks. Nowhere is it explained how this thing works. The manual devotes about 3 vague sentences to this. You'd think one of the goals of the simulation would warrant more of an explanation. Manual targeting is not much better. A stadimeter that doesn't reliably tell you range is not much good. And without a proper range reading, you can just toss out the rest of your firing solution because it won't mean anything. Without the tools to do what I need to do - sink ships - then why the heck am I even out at sea? So now let's say by luck and the grace of God, the stars have aligned correctly for you and you've managed to guess correctly what direction you need to be headed in, you've guessed correctly when you needed to come out of TC to set up an attack, you've guessed correctly the range to your target and you've shot your torpedoes. Now it's time for evasion. Well, hope you're ready for more guessing - this time you need to guess the magic speed you need to be doing to maintain your ordered depth, and of course you've guessed at what depth you ordered because the depth gauge is about 10 pixels high. Ordering your crew to perform the most perfunctory tasks is another guessing game. Do you have enough "morale points" to order silent running? Guess what!? Your XO is in a cranky mood today so no morale points and no silent running for you, Kaleun! Someone get my Luger. I've got a clip full of morale points for you. I can see that there was a lot of good ideas that the dev team wanted to do with this sim. But the missing and/or broken parts of it just make it a chore to get basic things done. I should be worried about tactically how to attack this convoy. Not worried about guessing how to perform the basic tasks I need to do in order to get this done. I hope that they're listening to our gripes and will address some of this in a patch. I hope that there are some blessed patient modders who can do something with what we've been given...I'd love them to spend their time adding to the game, not having to fix stuff that should work right in the first place. I want a sub sim, not a guessing game. Until I have more of the former and less of the latter, I consider firing up SH5 to be an exercise in trying my patience, not an exercise in sinking ships. __________________ They don’t think it be like it is, but it do. Want more U-boat Kaleun portraits for your SH3 Commander Profiles? Download the SH3 Commander Portrait Pack here. Last edited by mookiemookie; 03-04-10 at 01:26 AM.

03-04-10, 12:47 AM	#2
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	Another one in a string of what are sadly well-justified posts of critique. I just hope these posts and not "this game sux" keep getting through so that the developers are aware of what needs to be fixed. I do partially blame my situational awareness habits in SHIII/IV for disorienting me in SHV, but there's no question that some of the functionality should've never been changed. Ah well. I don't yet despair. There's always older titles to go back to while waiting on this one to kick its' biggest issues (most notably morale). __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

03-04-10, 01:06 AM	#9
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	Oh absolutely. I'm not arguing against that. You CAN get that information in the game, just that it's not how we're used to it and, ahem, not exactly completely logical. I will totally agree that the design of the interface is rather poor for anyone who expects to play with anything but simplified settings where instrumentation and solid grasp on situational awareness don't matter. As I said elsewhere, I think it's important to acknowledge that part of the issue is our own "old" SHIII/IV situational awareness habits, but the current interface couldn't be any less helpful in this. __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

03-04-10, 01:18 AM	#11
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	The fact is that well... someone, somewhere, imagined that people like clicking shiny buttons for very generic orders. Clearly, that's resulted in an outcome that players of a more serious breed can't approve of. I think the game's design went way, way too far in pushing the whole "you are the captain, you don't have your hands on the dials" point, forgetting one other, EXTREMELY important fact about a captain: yes your hands are off the buttons, but as the captain you NEED to be precisely aware of the situation and have a chance to respond to it with precise orders. Especially on the awareness front, the way the game is presented just won't cut it. Also as the captain, you NEED to have a way to make sure that your crew gets things done, NOW. Without having to go up in their face and "dialogue" them or pat them on the bottom. Unless, of course, you play with external camera, map contacts and auto aim... then you don't need that precision and timely-ness and can leisurely see everything from your mini-map perch. Instant, crucial situation info (from course to nearest contact) needs to be back within a click's or keystroke's reach. Same goes for virtually all orders that would be issued by voice command or mechanical input on a real military unit. __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

03-04-10, 08:14 AM	#14
Decoman Frogman Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 306 Downloads: 24 Uploads: 0	It would be nice to see some hints in game as to how a submarine is understood to be either silent or noisy. The game now has some info displayed about the two periscopes, and I liked learning this. It said something like that the observation periscope was more suitable for night time operations. I wonder if this is a functionality that is reflected with the options given to the player in this game. The ekstra info in-game, about various technologies would only really make sense if this can be adequately represented in a simulated environment like the silent hunter games. Perhaps the wording is critical. Instead of saying "The attack periscope bla bla", it should say "In ww2, the attack periscope on german u-boats were bla bla". Hinting at some limitation, and not insinuating that something is really simulated in-game. Last edited by Decoman; 03-04-10 at 08:57 AM.

03-04-10, 12:52 AM	#3
Herr Graf Mate Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 52 Downloads: 76 Uploads: 0	Yeah but dude, the water looks awesome!! runs and ducks

03-04-10, 01:01 AM	#5
Turbografx Old Stormalong Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: The Gret Stet of Loosiana Posts: 232 Downloads: 104 Uploads: 0	How can you not think this is the best game in the series!1?!?one? You must be blind. This is so much better than SH and AoD, I mean, just LOOK at the graphics! Learn 2 videogame... sarcasm off

03-04-10, 12:59 AM	#6
vonce1 A-ganger Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: So. California Posts: 79 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 0	many good points..good post

03-04-10, 01:03 AM	#7
gutted The Old Man Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: New Orleans, LA. Posts: 1,379 Downloads: 487 Uploads: 11	epic post. I hope the devs see it.

03-04-10, 01:13 AM	#10
Steeltrap Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 818 Downloads: 3 Uploads: 0	I, for one, have never understood why you can't simply hit a command (let's say 'N') whereupon a box pops up and you input 3 digits for the course you want. 'N' '135' response = new course 135; coming to 135 or whatever you like. How hard can it be? Isn't it what all the books and real ex-navy guys keep saying what happens?? It's just symptomatic of the game industry, I'm afraid. It's ironic that the mindblowing abilities of PCs compared with 10 years ago are coinciding with incredibly poorly written, poorly tested dross as games.