RIP silent hunter series

[Schunken]

Im only begging UBI for one thing:

Please, and even hell freeze.... do NOT buy Boeing or Airbus.......

(I fly every year 30.000 miles and only be 38 years old....)

Andreas

[Iron Budokan]

Originally Posted by frenema

Why are people letting this kind of 'release it half-done then patch it later' practice of companies by buying their games unquestioningly?

"There's a sucker born every minute." --P.T. Barnum, showman extraordinaire.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by tonyj

i'm sorry chaps, i'm upset.

this game is really, really, and i mean really, bad. play sh3 and its a pleasure, makes sense and just works.

sh5 is shockingly bad. I honestly think they released this halfway through the dev cycle.

i thought i was disappointed with sh4 but this reaches a new low.

i'm sorry to complain people but i had to get this off my chest.

Why thank you. The personal pains you carry around are just what the rest of us needs. In fact, I think my day is improved 85% by you having to just get this off your chest. Don't hesitate to let it out another time, please.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by frenema

Why are people letting this kind of 'release it half-done then patch it later' practice of companies by buying their games unquestioningly? Why does this have to be something that is 'normal'? Does this mean people are also willing to wait for Toyota to mail them new brakes after 6 months of purchase?

People are naive, they have expectations, which they assume will be accurate. When those expectations are not met, rather than admit disappointment, they try to kid themselves into believing that there is nothing wrong with the game, and that this is in fact exactly what they wanted in the first place.

There's no point trying to convince them otherwise, they'll just make snappy, sarcastic posts about negativity and lack of constructive critism, and go right on trying to convince themselves that it was the best 50 bucks they've ever spent.

[Turbografx]

Originally Posted by Schunken

Im only begging UBI for one thing:

Please, and even hell freeze.... do NOT buy Boeing or Airbus.......

(I fly every year 30.000 miles and only be 38 years old....)

Andreas

Lol:

"Here are your new A380 aircraft Air France.
Whats that? Where is the navigation system? Oh, we'll add that later. And the air filtration? That wasn't a priority at this time.
Yeah, I should take this time to mention that engines sometime cut out, but don't worry, we're working on it. Have fun!
Also, be aware that we'll be releasing an expansion kit in the near future that adds seat-belts and oxygen masks!"

Originally Posted by Nordmann

There's no point trying to convince them otherwise, they'll just make snappy, sarcastic posts about negativity and lack of constructive critism, and go right on trying to convince themselves that it was the best 50 bucks they've ever spent.

BUT IT WAS THE BEST $60 I EVER SPENT!!!one!1

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

People are naive, they have expectations, which they assume will be accurate. When those expectations are not met, rather than admit disappointment, they try to kid themselves into believing that there is nothing wrong with the game, and that this is in fact exactly what they wanted in the first place.

Just to clarify your position here, are you saying that all people are naive and are kidding themselves, or are you saying that only the people who say they are enjoying the game are naive and are kidding themselves? Because... there's a whole world of difference there. One point of view is baseless and the other point of view is equally as baseless. Oh, not so much of a difference after all! . If only I were naive, I'd believe everything you said. Oh my God! I must not be a person! OH NO! But I guess this must be what I wanted in the first place... so I should be happy?

[DragonRR1]

There should be a disclaimer here.. perhaps:

“The users of these forums do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the users of these forums!”

There is so much bickering going on! Quite astonishing. Anyway..

Having finally got my hands on SH5 I am really surprised that it ran at all given the huge amount of negativity it has received here. Quite honestly I wouldn’t have bought it had I have checked these forums before today.

SH-IV was one of the buggiest games I’ve ever laid my hands on. Out of the box it ran in low resolution, it had crash bugs and around 100+ other major issues.

SH -V. Well, I should point out that all I’ve done is set off and sunk one British ship after the somewhat poor training “mission” and therefore accept that it would be unfair for me to give a reasonable opinion on the game as a whole. However based on my, so far, rather brief encounter with the game I have yet to see it crash, the graphics are excellent, considerably better than SH-IV, the game IS playable. The UI is actually quite good in places but seems unfinished on the main view screen it also feels, as others have said, a bit unauthentic but then I don’t think they had UIs in WW2 J The one enemy ship, a freighter, I came across (whilst I was running at full on the surface) behaved as you would expect, jinking and running away as fast as possible. I wasn’t plagued by constant air patrols as I was in SH-IV.. The only “bug” I saw was when I requested the deck gun to be manned. The order was accepted but no-one manned the gun. However the issue was that the order should have been refused since the sea was too rough. The game overall has many issues but I only know this because I’ve read these forums, not because I’ve “bugged out of the game” as a programmer friend of mine tends to put it. (Well not bugged out yet anyway!)

In essence. Anyone who thinks SH-V is more buggy than SH-IV is wearing the wrong coloured spectacles. The game has many flaws, hopefully with a couple of patches from the devs and modding from the community they will be fixed.

I think it cannot be overstated that the Silent Hunter is pitched at a niche market. The budget UBI allow is obviously too tight but I suppose it is based on expected sales. Whilst boycotting this product might achieve a bug free SH-VI I think it far more likely it will end the series altogether. Decent PC games are hard to come by these days nearly everything is a “dumbed down” console conversion, don’t even get me started on Supreme Commander 2! SH-V, imo, is better than SH-IV in its initial release and has the potential to be far greater.

Oh, the DRM situation is absolutely fing ridiculous, I’ve never seen copy protection this intrusive and designed, it would seem, to only infuriate paying customers! FIX IT UBI!

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by tonyj

ok list of bugs then:

1) hydrophone operator only has 2 options - nothing about following targets or sweeping. CCIP you added that via keyboard.
2) surface next to a destroyer 3 times, didn't notice me.
3) rammed by destroyer - no damage
4) men, keep rotating when talking to them
5) sub doesn't sit on the bottom, floats abt 5m above it - atleast shadow does
6) no auto target - manual leading??!? even on auto
7) can't tell chaps to leave deck gun
8) can't find amount of ammo i have left in deck gun
9) have 2 types of map - tactical and main map - bit confusing
10) going up and down ladders not easy
11) conversations don't work properly - same conversation
12) moral set to zero when reloading
13) can't find out about weather
14) sub on rails to some extent
15) shadows clipping badly
16) slow explosions
17) bad explosions animations - sometimes very very slow (have 285 gtx)
18) depth charge leaves no effect on surface
19) gunfire very slow, doesn't animate properly
20) not enough guys in sub
21) clipping issues with men
22) no way to find out heading
23) no morale after save means at high TC you die as it never drops out and destroyers kill you
24) some guys have no options when talking to them other than leaving dialog (map guy)

worst of all, the morale bug is crippling - equivalent of the 'A' CTD in sh4 as TC doesn't drop out and men refuse to do anything.

Dont know if that has been posted before, but saw this post at the Ubi forum from the Dev team which seems to directly address some of the points above:

05.03.2010


Surface next to a destroyer 3 times, didn't notice me.

The actual detection system is tuned on various parameters – light, fog, object size, etc. Based on the day / night conditions your crew cannot spot instantly the enemy ships all the time. We decided to make the scene illumination more friendly for player – there is no pitch black, the fog is not 100%, etc – unlike the crew AI who has all the penalties (realistic simulation). Also the current reporting officer is updating you every 1 minute (in the initial version there was 4 minutes, so this may let you believe they don’t do anything at all). The reason we decided to make crew report every minute, not every 5 seconds for example is because it can become annoying to listen to that guy reporting the same thing over and over.


No auto target .

Periscope has now two types of firing system. One manual where you need to determine the target speed, range, AOB, etc in order to find the solution and one where you need to estimate the torpedo trajectory by analyzing the map. Compare with the previous SH, where in auto-target mode you simply select-and-fire, now you actually need to estimate target course, based on the map information, watch target through periscope to see its speed and finally use your combat experience to predetermine torpedo trajectory.


Can't tell chaps to leave deck gun.

You can secure the deck gun by talking with the Watch Officer. You can find him either in the Crew Quarter or on the Bridge when the submarine is at surface.


Have 2 types of map - tactical and main map - bit confusing

Basically there is only 1 map with different functionality – tactical map is used when at battle stations and have specific information displayed on it, while the strategic map has different role and information displayed. While a bit confusing, it was necessarily to have this kind of separation, otherwise the map would have become clustered.


Not enough guys in sub

We have place in the sub only the guys at the current stations or doing maintenance activities on board of the submarine, which are around 20-25 guys. The other guys up to 40, are resting in the Crew Quarters. Having 40 guys in submarine would have made player movement and character interaction quite difficult.



Some guys have no options when talking to them other than leaving dialog (map guy).

You can discuss only with some guys on the submarine, specifically petty officers or officers. Also these guys have different dialogues only in some campaigns, and this is specific for each of them both in the numbers of options and campaign.

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...8591082387/p/1

[Spartan]

On par or maybe worse than four; that is Ubi for you.
Always a money grab and always at the expense of the customers - not consumers. If you had any doubt about this concept the new DRM should be proof positive that you are not a consumer.

I hope, really, really hope the new DRM scheme make Ubi tank as a company or at the very least cause a lot of executives lose their jobs.

I so wish the venerable and classic SH franchise was given to a far better company that respects PC gamers and puts out fairly well polished titles.

[MaciejK]

Hm....

So Kaleun cannot tell teh folks at the deck gun to leave it? he has to go and find the watch officer?

it is nuts.

[Commie]

Hi, new here and have to say that SH5 will be the last of these sims published and made by one of the big publishers. Ubisoft was always my favourite among the big ones because only they had persevered to publish and sometimes develop simulators when everyone else had abandoned them.

With Silent Hunter of course it was always on that borderline between staying alive and being cancelled. Let's face it, if Ubisoft didn't have a cheap resource to make it in Romania and instead had to rely on a western studio they would have given up after SH3. The continual decrepit state of the SH series when released also points to Ubisoft being loathe to get a new more costly developer to make the series, as they figure, rightly, that we (sub) simmers will be grateful with any half finished bug riddled product, that the talented among us will then use their time and energy into turning it into the game it should be. Ubisoft figured that since they have a virtual monopoly on sub sims these days, then they have no reason to increase the quality of its games.

Now with the DRM debacle, it seems to be doing what a stream of half finished games didn't: angering the sub sim community. This will probably end up killing off Silent Hunter, as from a small base, a few percentage points less sales will be enough for Ubisoft to pull the plug on this.

Maybe it will live on as some kind of action-sub game such as the H.A.W.X. thing, incidentally also from Romania.

Maybe they can call it S.U.B.Z.?

[guynoir]

Originally Posted by Ubisoft

Surface next to a destroyer 3 times, didn't notice me.

<.....> Also the current reporting officer is updating you every 1 minute (in the initial version there was 4 minutes, so this may let you believe they don’t do anything at all). The reason we decided to make crew report every minute, not every 5 seconds for example is because it can become annoying to listen to that guy reporting the same thing over and over.

I wonder why they'd hard-code time intervals like this? Why not have the reporting guy announce negatives every minute (or four) but report positives immediately...

It doesn't make sense to surface next to a destroyer 2 seconds after the last report and have to wait 58 more seconds for the next report to roll around.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by MaciejK

Hm....

So Kaleun cannot tell teh folks at the deck gun to leave it? he has to go and find the watch officer?

it is nuts.

I just dive with them out there... thatll teach them !

[Omnissiah]

Originally Posted by Commie

Maybe it will live on as some kind of action-sub game such as the H.A.W.X. thing, incidentally also from Romania.

Maybe they can call it S.U.B.Z.?

This would be funnier if it didn't have such a ring of truth to it...

[popcorn2721]

Originally Posted by jwilliams

I've been buying computer games for over 25 years now. Got my first computer at age 10 (commodore vic 20).

I have never bought a game as unfinished as ubisofts silent hunter series (maybe I've just been lucky). but i have probitly bought over 300 games in my life time and the only unfinished ones i've seen are silent hunter games. Sure i've bought games with bugs, but nothing major. I cannot beleive that any company would release a game in such an unfinished state. If the game is not finished, then you delay it, sure you'll upset a few, but release unfinished you upset many.

Everyone keeps saying but its got potenial, patches and modders will finish it. THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE TO !!!

Thats like buying a book, but only the odd numbers have the print on them and telling you that maybe you might find the even pages online and download them youself, then add them to your book.

I'm sure that if any one bought a book like that you soon be returning it!!!

SH3 - I bought - A few problems, not too bad after patches... and is now really good after modders (thanks guys).

SH4 i never bought. Unfinished state put me off.

SH5 i want to buy... but OMG... dont know if i will now.

Ubisoft Dev's and Publisher really need some Quality Control systems put in place.

Thats Funny, my first puter was a VIC 20 too, then a TRS80 from radio shack (guess our age is showing a bit eh, mate?).
Being an avid gamer myself I have to say that I was disappointed to the point of shelving my copy of SH4 when I purchased it. If these companies cannot produce a quality product that is able to be played without "fixing" or "further development by people who are not going to get paid" they should turn over the keys to the engine so the hard core modders could at the very least create something that might make some of the time invested give them a bit of a return. Myself, Im just sick of playing broken half finished games (not just UBI although they are now one of the major offenders).
No, I wont be buying this anytime soon... and unless they get around the DRM, I probably wont ever have this on my hard drive.

On another note, I found out that many of the people who were involved with Mercincos Rouge Warrior game were promptly sacked after its release. I wonder if UBI is holding its DEV team likewise accountable?