Silent Hunter Online

[Nisgeis]

I tried to determine what exactly all the definitions were for online game business models. Turns out, it's quite a horrible confusing mess.

Originally Posted by drEaPer

Yep, and before it just had a different naming: Demo, Trial, Shareware with restricted access to content and functions.

Unlike World of Warcraft, Eve Online etc. you do not have to pay 60 bucks after a 14day trial and transfer 15 bucks a month to continue playing.

A time limited trial is what is now called Freemium and is not 'Free To Play'.

World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and DIablo III (when it's released in a few days) are all now on what Blizzard call 'Free to Play' and they have changed the trial from time limited to level capped and character restrictions. Blizzard has to call them free to play, as a it sounds better than Freemium as that implies there is a cost later on. It's sad, but in order to compete on a level playing field, they all have to call their games 'Free to Play' even if they aren't.

Originally Posted by drEaPer

-F2P was generally accepted by gamers before it was called F2P, it was called "demo". The purpose of a demo was to get an impression and to decide if you want to buy the game. Of course Demos featured the more attractive stuff, and were visually appealing to lure you to buy the main game. F2P does the same.

I'm sorry to quote you again drEaPer, I'm not picking on you, but you just provided the best quotable material.

This is where things start to get confused. Free to Play is claimed by some to mean literally free to play the game, even if the game costs money to buy. Some Guildwars fans claim that Guildwars is 'Free to Play' as there is no subscription fee, even though you still have to purchase the initial game (and every expansion pack to date). Other places define Free to Play as a game where you don't have to pay a subsription (which leaves the issue of initial price hanging in the air). OK, I'm going off topic with this, but the point is, it's a term that doesn't really mean anything, as it hasn't been strictly defined and there are no rules governing it. It's like saying a mobile phone contract has unliited texts, yet there is in fact a fair usage (limited) quota of 300 texts, or having unlimited download quota on your broadband even though it has a fair usage (limited) quota. You can say it's unlimited all you want and a lot of people will get taken in by it, but it's not unlimited.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not at all. All I'm saying is if you have to pay to get the fullest benefit, then no matter how you twist it it's not really free.

There are ways of making micro transactions in the game that do not affect actual gameply. For example, you could charge someone a dollar to allow them to customise their sub with an emblem. This doesn't affect gameplay, but is something people would possibly do. Of course there are ways to really screw up the gameplay balance as well and therein lies the difficulty.

Do we know yet what form the micro transcactions will take?

Originally Posted by Ducimus

1. Browser based. Really? I didn't buy a beefy rig to play flash or java games in a web browser.

NOTE: That's quoted from another thread.

Unity (a game / 3D application development platform) recently released a version that could cross complie to Flash 11 and I have to say the results were pretty nifty. Here's an Adobe presentation featuring Unreal 3 cross compiled into Flash 11:



I'm quite indifferent to SHO, as I long ago gave up on all hope that Ubisoft would ever fix SH4 or SH5. I think that a lot of the angst here is a sense of injustice that Ubisoft are making another game when they haven't finished the last two in the series. It's almost as if the feeling is that there should be an authority that can go round saying 'Now listen here, you didn't finish your last two games in the franchise, so you can't start a new one before you finish those other two'. Just like talking to a child who never finishes anything.

I think I wrote more than I was going to. Sorry to bore you all.

[Sonarman]

According to Seeadler's recent translation of the video interview with a producer of SHO....

Q: What does the pay-model look like?

A: Most gamers who play browser games don't pay for anything and that is also our goal but we will have also a pay-model. Paying gamer can not get something that non-paying gamers can not reach, they are only getting certain things faster.


So they are indeed stating publicly that all content can be obtained for free the question then becomes how much grinding will be involved.

What goads me so much as they state mature subsimmers as their primary target audience yet they kept the project super secret till its almost complete instead of conducting market research, asking the community what they thought would make the ideal online subsim.

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by Sonarman

A: Most gamers who play browser games don't pay for anything and that is also our goal but

Nobody has a goal with a but attached... what's attached is the goal. Its just a matter of getting everyone inline.... 'free' is the quickest way to do that.

[kapitan_zur_see]

Seriously, browser and flash based, is this an elaborate practical joke???

How can one pretends to develop a serious modern game and subsim at that using this?? I'm suprised nobody here raised another eye brow...

My SH5 data folder indicates roughly 9 Gb of data in it... Yeah, sure, there's mods in ... can't recall what it was right out of the box, but sure like most modern games something akin to 4Gb +. That's what it takes to make a modern game these days, not much less than that...

Browser based and falsh means NO already downloaded client!! I'm in France and I don't live in Paris. I don't know for you guys here in the US or elsewhere how much can you squeeze out of your internet, but as for me, I'm can't get more than, at extremely best, 400-420 Kb/s. How will you manage downloading so much data as to make a PROPER 2012 3D game working and avoid getting hell lots of loading time without owning a current state of the art internet access??

This cannot means anything but HUGE step backward in terms of graphics, textures resolution, sounds (less problematic), overhaul complexity and immersion factors like interiors, sea states, harbours details and the like. In other words: Silent Hunter The Lite Edition.

Sorry guys, I'm not "buying" this...! Things should always expands and improve as time moves on! not the other way around... This is not SH then to me, period.

BTW graphics looks already like old fashioned SH3 even as it seems without interior and animated crew members. Seriously, if it's back to only close-up still screens of various stations, it won't work for me... in 2012, I think the "ghost ship" syndrome should utterly be a thing from the past!! Totally breaks it for me if it's the case (and it would seems so given the browser based nature).

To guys who are also concerned about immersion factors as much as realism, this doesn't seems to start well...

Yeah, I know... Flash data for the game in cache... alright, what's with cleaning cache processes and stuff? I'm really afraid it can't lead to anything but huge let downs in order to manage downloading times...

And come on... that flash bogeyman SCREAMS memory leaks and CPU hogging performance issues, browser crashes and everything. Not to mentions lags. Seriously, sometimes, firefox even has issues managing multiple tabs with youtube-like or other flash-based stuff in there. Not to mention flash gradually being more and more abandoned by developers and browsers, as it seems to me. Looks like some people seems to think it's to be avoided like the plague, Ain't I right? (I'm no dev)


And you guys raised a righteous eyebrow with modding concern regarding any SH games (though it should less apply to an alleged F2P game), however modding is not just abour FIXING game issues... It's also about expanding the game in directions that wouldn't be possible for devs who are constraints to budget/time management limitations... and that also means a lot in modding, people are working on their free time which is not tied to a budget and dead lines, so they can do more stuff.

For me, a sim with no modding capabilities should be a no go. As for this game, I deem it to be something else then.

After the SH5 debacle, this news even suprised me as to being an even more WTF moment! Seriously... kudos to you guys at UBI who are able to come up with such ideas as a flash based simulation...

[PL_Andrev]

Relax men,
Your internet speed is correct.
This is flash game - a 2D view game with 2D periscope view.

Imagine that ancient Silent Service or Silent Service 2 games were a playable 2D game. This is this same story but with better graphics and level system called "campaign".

[kapitan_zur_see]

Originally Posted by Antar

Relax men,
Your internet speed is correct.
This is flash game - a 2D view game with 2D periscope view.

WOW! This IS the future! I'm impressed!

anyway, it's rather 2D layout with some 3D view you meant
Flash 11 is supposedly capable of higher grade stuff, even such as integrating Unreal Engine 3 which is certainly no small thing. However, you wouldn't be able to use UE3 the way mass effect or gears of war are using it, for instance. Modern looking textures and the like sure would take too much bandwidth...

Anyway, one can see that the real 3D engine used here is far inferior to SH4/SH5 (source: official late periscope screenshot). Hence I find it rather amusing that they display so few actual ingame 3d shots instead of pre-rendered bells & whistle stuff (seriously, the exterior shot using SH5 3d engine making you doubt it's actual ingame render vs the periscope 3d display... ). Kinda says it all to me...

The whole online idea has always been interesting though regarding a WW2 subsim, kinda like having a "real" BdU, coordinating patrols, compete with other commanders and etc. the game could be fun as a small "from time to time" quick subsim, doing a bit of internet browsing on a separate tab while waiting for contact reports, that kind of thing... Not as time consuming and as immersive as doing a patrol in SH 3 to 5, if you see what I mean. However I think the project would have had a MUCH LARGER appeal should it allowed Uboat vs. Destroyer kind of multyplayer experience. At any rate now, It may just feels like a single player multi-player experience, which, well... kinda negates the usual multi-player idea of getting fun

[Brandon01]

Well love it or hate it it seems that its gonna be here to stay (until UBI looses interest or the player base collapses) either way its free and its not gonna kill us to try it. Just wish they would merge games like they did with Destroyer Command and SH2. Even though SH5 is unfinished and a dog of a game i do like the fact that they put in the VIIA and the SMS Deutschland pre-dreadnought class Battleship. They did a great job on the modeling for that ship given all they had to work off of was a bunch of old photographs and files.

[Seeadler]

People should not expect a simulation of SHO, the devs never said they develop a simulation, it will be just a game with submarines