Why Doesn't Ubisoft put these Modders on the payroll?

[McHub532]

Perhaps the question is too simple....

Why turn out garbage that infuriates 70% (made up #) of your customers of which refuse to buy your product... 30% buy it and spend the next year fixing it to make it enjoyable.

Why don't you (Ubisoft) put these Modders on your payroll? Turn out your piece of garbage software to the modders as Beta testers.. actually pay them MONEY to fix your rubbish. Then.. when the finished product hits the market a new awakening of customers will flood in in SHOCK that you finally pulled your **** our of your ****.

Seriously... hire the modders here and make a good product.

[kylania]

Because that would cost money and rather than have the time to do the amazing job they are doing they'd be in crunch mode to finish a product with no time and no budget and we'd end up with what we ended up with.

[msxyz]

Exactly. They did not even invest in finishing the game and putting a decent quantity of content into it (same ships everywhere...).

I don't know how good SH5 developers are but, seeing SH3 I think they know a thing or two about game development.

The current state of the program depends on management decisions from the producer.

[Noren]

Does anybode actually have insight in all of this? The devs, the publisher, the shareholders...we can never truly be sure what happened until someone come clean. If course, Its nice to give them the benefit of a doubt but their incapability to communicate is a problem.

Ubisoft's worth increased 43% last year, mainstream seems the way to go. Like Evony does, why bother with customer support when there's always a new buyer waiting down the road - ready to be awed by nice graphics and instant enjoyment.

Im considering myself quite a cynic nowadays, desillusionised really. Ubisoft better step it up and start to earn my money.

Lastly on topic: perhaps not modders on the payrol but more direct support from the devs to the modding community - I think that would benefit ubisfot tremendously and show that they care.

[kylania]

SH5 seems to have a LOT more for the modders to work with, especially with the scripting and new node features.

Game design is tricky, especially when you work for a huge publisher like UbiSoft who honestly only cares about money. Smaller game studios can put more passion into their games since they are creating art. Larger publisher owned studios are forced to extrude revenue streams, which leaves little room or time for art or passion or quality.

Friend of mine is a game designer and has told me how early into a project they'll come up with 400+ pages of ideas and things to put into a game and end up having to slash that down to 40 pages or so to actually begin the project and only 20 of those pages/ideas might actually make it to release due to development time and budget allowed. Thankfully Silent Hunter gives the players the tools to add back in those 400 pages of ideas.

[avee]

Ubisoft should have a look at Paradox Interactive:
1. All Paradox games are DRM-free. But players still buy their games because they get support and are not treated as thieves. If you buy Paradox game, you actually get less problems more benefits than if you pirate it.
2. Paradox communicates with players and fixes most problems in patches.
3. Some megamod teams got some kind of agreement with devs, got source code and are now releasing their own games. Imagine what would "GWX the game" look like.

[thyro]

Originally Posted by avee

Ubisoft should have a look at Paradox Interactive:
1. All Paradox games are DRM-free. But players still buy their games because they get support and are not treated as thieves. If you buy Paradox game, you actually get less problems more benefits than if you pirate it.
2. Paradox communicates with players and fixes most problems in patches.
3. Some megamod teams got some kind of agreement with devs, got source code and are now releasing their own games. Imagine what would "GWX the game" look like.

Same with "StarDock Games" and the best space strategy game "Sins of Solair Empire"... for you to patch it you need impulse (steam look like) and impulse certify that your serial number is valid otherwise it won't patch anything. Simple and very useful and no DRM crap.

[sav112]

What always gets me is these guys the Mod’s can fix things and change things for the better in a matter of the first few weeks, They can spot obvious mistakes that were obviously missed or just left by the developers in the half arsed why the game was released.


If the Mod’s can do so much in a week then why cant a seemingly professional outfit make such an arse of it

I’m dam sure the game would not end in 1943 that’s for sure if the Mod’s had started it and script the very boring interaction with the crew. What they should have done is got to the stage were they said right “ We have the look now lets get the feeling and depth into the game and nail down the nut and bolts like the Ai etc”

[mcarlsonus]

short answer...because Ubi can now release trash guilt-free, fully expecting unpaid volunteers to fix their disasters and make them usable. Kind of like Microsoft...

[alexradu89]

Originally Posted by mcarlsonus

short answer...because Ubi can now release trash guilt-free, fully expecting unpaid volunteers to fix their disasters and make them usable. Kind of like Microsoft...

Win!

[sav112]

That does seem the business plan but also that the game is now half price and not selling and retailers liable to not request any more that seems to be a kick in the face to them......

And I so wanted this to do well and be great as I'm not one for these brainless kill fests, played with the wee one last night on the 360 and got killed every two minutes on the MW2 game. The tag game on the car game is great all the same Multi........

[badaboom]

Thank God for the Modders!

[The Enigma]

Why Doesn't Ubisoft put these Modders on the payroll?

Because UBI can't afford the money they should have been payed.

[McHub532]

Originally Posted by The Enigma

Because UBI can't afford the money they should have been payed.

What about bragging rights?
Let our amazing modders here in on the product before it's released to the product. They could drag out the ... "If you knew what I knew.. SH6 is going to blow your mind.." We'd be drooling and elbowing each other to buy the next product.
Pay them with an easter egg per modder, their names in the 'credits' page and drop them each $1000. It would be the most cost effective thing the company ever did. They'd make $100,000 on a $10,000 investment. At LEAST!

[janh]

Originally Posted by McHub532

Perhaps the question is too simple....

Why turn out garbage that infuriates 70% (made up #) of your customers of which refuse to buy your product... 30% buy it and spend the next year fixing it to make it enjoyable.

Why don't you (Ubisoft) put these Modders on your payroll? Turn out your piece of garbage software to the modders as Beta testers.. actually pay them MONEY to fix your rubbish. Then.. when the finished product hits the market a new awakening of customers will flood in in SHOCK that you finally pulled your **** our of your ****.

Seriously... hire the modders here and make a good product.

I think the Ubisoft Romania studio employees have proven with previous SH releases that they have the competence to do themselves what some talented of the modders now jimmy-rig. It is just for Ubisoft to allocate the extra time and money to complete and drive the development of a release to a certain stage. And the "stage" that they wanted to release it was just not the "stage" that we would have liked to received it in... I'd call it a marketing mistake, developed without taking the customer all to serious, or tangential to market demands.