How did the OSP(-DRM) service influence your opinion on Silent Hunter V?

[janh]

How did the OSP & DRM service influence your opinion on Silent Hunter V? (I.e. how would you have rated the game had it not had this DRM?) Did it make you less or more critical towards the product of the game?

Note that this does NOT ask for the absolute rating you give, but only whether OSP-DRM added/distracted to/from the quality of the product! And this poll does not test whether you bought SHV exactly because it had OSP, nor whether you won't buy it because of it. And the purpose of this poll is neither to criticize nor to praise OSP-DRM.

Both posters that own the game and have first hand experience, and posters that have build an opinion based on facts from the reviews, previews and the user comments here in subsim are welcome to vote.

I tried to construct it in a neutral fashion. I hope this is an intersting poll and gives a few insights on the effect the OSP-DRM has on buyers and potential buyers.

(sorry Neal if this counts as another DRM thread.)

[Sailor Steve]

As far as I'm concerned it's the only factor. Everything else can be dealt with or not, in its own time.

[Nordmann]

Personally, it's a small hassle, an inconvenience that I'd rather not have. Thus far I've yet to experience any problems, but that's not to say I like it.

But to judge the game solely based on the net requirement, to my mind that is short sighted. I will judge the game based on its content, and from what I've seen, it's quite good.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

Personally, it's a small hassle, an inconvenience that I'd rather not have. Thus far I've yet to experience any problems, but that's not to say I like it.

But to judge the game solely based on the net requirement, to my mind that is short sighted. I will judge the game based on its content, and from what I've seen, it's quite good.

This. Though I have been unable to play the first two weekends, and I did lose a day of saves, but since the initial weekends the DRM has been quite unobtrusive, certainly not enough to explain the frothing of the anti-SH5 crowd any longer.

[Der Teddy Bar]

Originally Posted by kylania

This. Though I have been unable to play the first two weekends, and I did lose a day of saves, but since the initial weekends the DRM has been quite unobtrusive, certainly not enough to explain the frothing of the anti-SH5 crowd any longer.

That is all great while you can play and I certainly do not wish you any issues in being able to play when you want/can, but... It does not matter how reliable the Ubisoft online authentication is, indirectly the always online requirement will stop people from playing at the times they want/can.

I have moved since the tale of woe below, but I am sure many people are experiencing the same issues I did and while career wise we do not have to move and our house we are building should have the same ADSL broadband that I currently have, there is no guarantee.

I live in Australia, 20 minutes outside Canberra, our national capital. But when it came to getting an internet connection that meant little. I had the choice of 1 ISP and the connection was wireless as the telephone lines were pair gain i.e. where the telco overloads the copper with services in lieu of actually installing adequate infrastructure which our national telco Telecom is infamous for.

Here I was having just arrived in our nations capital, all be it just outside, and I had to wait 7 weeks to get my internet connection.

7 weeks later all keen to surf the net and catch up on the world as I know it, but the very next day there is a slight issue. The internet is not available till 08.30 and this happens the next day and the next where the connection was only available starting from 07.30 to 09.00. Upon following this up with my ISP I find that the wireless towers do not have enough battery capacity to cope with the winter overcast days. This took 9 months to be rectified.

I was to find out that this was the least of my problems with this ISP. There were regular outages of 1-4 hours every 2-4 days and 4-12 hours every 2-3 weeks. The longest outage we had was 3 days. The network was so overloaded the 1500k connection would often be sub 400k.

As bad as this ISP was if it was not for this community oriented ISP I would have had to use a 56k dial service. Remember this is in Australia and a mere 20 minutes outside out national capital.

What of the 21 weeks (5.1 months) over 2.5 years I would not have been able to play because I was awaiting a new internet connection because we had to move due to work? This time does not count the extreme 7 weeks above!

Before dismissing peoples angst at UBI's DRM (which is not about stopping piracy but the 2nd hand market) consider that they may not be as fortunate as you and cannot play the games they purchased when ever they want/need.

Such as those "Australian gamers unable to play Settlers 7 due to DRM woes"

I doubt the anyone would accept this type of DRM on their books, even electronic or audio one?

If Ubi were selling books they would have the Public Library outlawed

[HKLE]

Hi folks

Just some comments on the general subject:

DRM killed my preorder before the publication of this game. Although I should not have the problems of our down under colleaques, I do not like the idea of having to pay for less quality and options in comparison to previous games - in the past, the standard for offline games simply was different, as you all know. So - the new concept might serve UBI, but at the time in March I did not see any advantage for us customers.

In the hindsight though, I might decide in a different way, if the quality of the product would have been ok.

But SH5 seems even to be worse or equal to SH2 in terms of gameplay (and this is the long time motivation factor for such a game - nothing is more boring than all the eyecandy after a few hours - with just a few freighter types and always the same dialoques with crew ...). Concerning the setup of options, I cannot choose different U-boat types (well - for the so called "role playing" concept of this game, one U-boat type may be enough), but what really is a show stopper for me, is the scripted and uniform campaign "system" - start only in 39, arcade style (and totally unrealistic) mission targets, no other options allowed.

This is something I vehemently argued against already back in the development stages of SH3 - at the time with success - so SH3 still is THE game for me (I do not mind the missing eye candy, if the game itself is ok).


UBI had other ideas with this game though. First - short playabilty seems to create better opportunities for addons (more U-boat types, another campaign, maybe another theater (again), missing items such more freighter types and so on). The - new type of - customer, UBI has in mind, seems to be of the short attention type - therefore the arcade approach. They can be milked better than the old crowd - get the 50 bucks fast and forget about it.

Apparently, the marketing concept was to get new customers while the old customer base certainly would buy EVERY new game, whatever quality it might be.

And I - as old customer - almost fell for this candy myself.

Another question for me is, why UBI obviously rushed this game to the market, when it was far from being complete. The main reason in my opinion was, that UBI wanted to test the new DRM scheme on a comparably small customer base - because it does not hurt so much, if something goes wrong.

So - the DRM discussion itself prevented me from buying a game, which I would have forgotten within a few months anyway - mainly because of poor gameplay and only a few rather boring options. (I still play SH3 and 4 a lot)

The campaign system - important as core to longer playabilty - is solidly in the hands of UBI and their uncertain promises. If the game does not create the ROI planned, bad luck for the existing customers. No further development. Even no promises to do so.

One of the main open items for UBI is the question, if this massive customer deception and the accompanying image loss does not fall back on future sales. I read an article, that at least at the moment, they had a very good sales success in markets, where there is traditionally a high piracy rate - like Russia. (I wonder, why Russian companies like 1C can live without such a DRM scheme ?). But this is now - and then ? I doubt, that the customers do not learn from such a lesson themselves.

Thanks to the DRM announcement, I did not spend my share on this massive customer betrayal. My personal conclusion of this lesson is, that I shall generally wait for some time, before buying a new game - no matter which publisher - and let the early buyer crowd have it.

[Takeda Shingen]

Do we really need yet another poll to determine the public perception of DRM?

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Do we really need yet another poll to determine the public perception of DRM?

Probably not, but then again, perception may well have changed since the last one was conducted. I think it's interesting to see where people currently stand, compared to a few weeks ago.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

Probably not, but then again, perception may well have changed since the last one was conducted. I think it's interesting to see where people currently stand, compared to a few weeks ago.

Oh, okay. I wasn't aware that we were a data collection agency. Besides, I think that after countless polls asking exactly the same question, we have a pretty good idea of where people stand.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Oh, okay. I wasn't aware that we were a data collection agency. Besides, I think that after countless polls asking exactly the same question, we have a pretty good idea of where people stand.

Well, if you want to split hairs, technically you are. All files, posts, pictures etc can be classed as data, collected into one place, here.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

Well, if you want to split hairs, technically you are. All files, posts, pictures etc can be classed as data, collected into one place, here.

Polemics. We're talking about systematic data collection.

[janh]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Do we really need yet another poll to determine the public perception of DRM?

The previous polls tested "DRM", but if you read my description above, this one gauges something else: How DRM "skews" the perception of the original product to be sold. It does not question whether you like or dislike DRM etc. That is entirely different.

I am testing a hypothesis here: Over the past weeks I got the impression that despite the shortcomings and bugs of SHV, it would have been received at least as well as SHIV or SHIII, maybe even better, but only for the DRM on top of that most people really saw it as a much worse product. I know this would be only a tiny comfort to the developers, but if true it would indicate that this kind of "OSP" customer binding does cause significant damage to reputation, rating and sales. Many people do not support it, but may accept it as an unavoidable thing, but for those who would like to see Ubisoft change it policy, this could produce at least a result significant for this community of subsim fans. And maybe this would even be representative of a general customer basis.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by janh

The previous polls tested "DRM", but if you read my description above, this one gauges something else: How DRM "skews" the perception of the original product to be sold. It does not question whether you like or dislike DRM etc. That is entirely different.

I am testing a hypothesis here: Over the past weeks I got the impression that despite the shortcomings and bugs of SHV, it would have been received at least as well as SHIV or SHIII, maybe even better, but only for the DRM on top of that most people really saw it as a much worse product that it perhaps would be without the OSP-DRM. I know this would be only a tiny comfort to the developers, but if true it would indicate that this kind of "OSP" customer binding does cause significant damage to reputation, rating and sales.

Then what are your antecedent and threshold? A hypothesis must originate with a given, not an impression. Also, what will be your accepted margin of statistical error?

[janh]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Then what are your antecedent and threshold? A hypothesis must originate with a given, not an impression. Also, what will be your accepted margin of statistical error?

As said, my hypothesis is based on the impression that I got over the past weeks here. And a hypothesis does not have to be based on "a given", but can also be an idea etc you want to test. And for your 2nd question: statistical errors will likely be large, but this will nonetheless give you a general idea where the answer is going.
As you stated, this site does not perform systematical data gathering. But since at least one person from Ubisoft Romania visits this forum regulary, I hope that this "general idea" gets conveyed. If you wanted to do this poll in a professional manner, it wouldn't be possible here anyway as you can only have a single question per poll. You'd need to set up a combination of questions, that also cross-check the given answers on the crucial test, and give further details that can help to eliminate "false samples".

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by janh

As said, my hypothesis is based on the impression that I got over the past weeks here. And a hypothesis does not have to be based on "a given", but can also be an idea etc you want to test. And for your 2nd question: statistical errors will likely be large, but this will nonetheless give you a general idea where the answer is going.
As you stated, this site does not perform systematical data gathering. But since at least one person from Ubisoft Romania visits this forum regulary, I hope that this "general idea" gets conveyed. If you wanted to do this poll in a professional manner, it wouldn't be possible here anyway as you can only have a single question per poll. You'd need to set up a combination of questions, that also cross-check the given answers on the crucial test, and give further details that can help to eliminate "false samples".

Really, I don't want to sidetrack this, and I'll go away after this, unless there is some sort form of fisticuffs, and then I'll be back in official form. Still, it is worth noting that every hypothesis is postulated by the following statement: Given 'X', then 'Y'; where 'X' is known and proven, and 'Y' is that which is yet to be proven. It's been that way since Socrates.