New community manager in ubisoft forums

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by scratch81

I've noticed over the years lurking here, that sailor steve is more smarterer than he really lets on... most of the time.

Or, as I like to say, I'm a real with...half the time.

[karamazovnew]

BP should hire Steve to be their spokesperson

Someone has said that having the dev team working on another project is proof that SH is dead. That's nonsense. It's like saying that The Elder Scrolls franchise is dead because nobody's working on a new title. Poor sales and bad quality could be the nail in coffin for SH, yes, as is Ubisoft's move to more well established titles and it's migration to consoles (Wii in particular). However I think that SH5 has showed promise, either from total newcomers enticed by the superb graphics and the lure of the sea, and a huge negative backlash from hardcore simmers (which shows there is an interest for that too) and will show a comeback as people forget about DRM and mods pick up the pace. One more comprehensive patch wouldn't hurt either.

As far as bugs are concerned, you have to remember that a game tester only cares about this much about the game he's been assigned to. And giving a niche sim to a tester must sound like making him catch roaches with his tongue. Yes, he'll spot SOME bugs, but flaws in the proper workflow will slip by. Thus, I believe that when reporting a bug, we shouldn't simply say "the AI sucks", "the stadimeter is bugged!!!! fix it!!!", but give a better explanation. That's exactly why I'm counting on the main modders to report major issues, because they've seen the bugs and the major road blocks (room for improvement, of which I've already talked about in previous posts).

As far as piracy and dll modification is concerned... Shouldn't DRM already protect the game enough? Yes, that was a sad joke, considering that pirated versions appeared almost from day one. But what I mean... shouldn't this DRM actually give us more freedom to change stuff outside the data folder? As long as we don't accidentally break the DRM of course

[janh]

The discussion of whether SH franchise dies or not is as usual pretty useless and purely speculative. Again, even if it does, then this could be the opportunity for a new submarine sim to rise from the ashes. A new start occasionally is very desirable.

Anyway, if it "dies", then there is only one possible cause that would have led to that decision: economic reasons. Simply that Ubi would decide they loose out with another SH title, or they simple can earn more with a different program. And if SH sales are low now, and they loose out, well, then they probably would quickly know why if they read the posts of the past 3 month on this forum. I think most other (potential) customers will agree with one or the other post here, and the acceptance in PC magazines, online or printed, pretty much reflects this as well. And probably the sticker "permanent online connection required" acts also like a big red stop sign.

Why are we then searching for fault in this forum, with any people??? If SH dies, the fault clearly rests with another group of people -- all on the pay list of Ubisoft corporation. And whether some people learned from the Ubi's history with SHIV, and now say "I told you so", shouldn't matter either. I'd say, unfortunately, judging from the general reception and opinions on what SHV represents now, they were simply right to be cautious. If somebody thinks different about the game and enjoys it, then he shouldn't be bothered by those people either -- for him or her, they obviously were wrong with their predictions. I think everyone can be very relaxed about it.

More interesting should be what Dan and coworkers will finally do about SHV in terms of futures patches or addons now that are listening again.