The thing I dislike in games where you can pay for better instrumentation or faster growth is if the statistics dont take that into account.
I like to have a comparison with other players, that shows me how I am doing.

But a good player that spends money will perform better than one that doesnt (here ppl start to spend a lot to climb the ladder).
Not showing separated statistics is another way to push ppl to spend. (Be clear that I dont know how thats implemented in SHO).

On the other hand the company cant live of our applauses, and it cant publish how much players spend.

What a balance :timeout:

Gotta get used to it i guess.

There is nothing like a 15 day login que ... the beta login server must be run on windows 3.1

I can not see how a web based program could ever be better than one driven on your computer. Hell at least you can play SH without an internet connection plus it is performance based and the mod community is second to none in my book.

Tried the online game today that ubi made. OMG I wanted to rip my hair out. I'm sorry some might like it but there is no way in hell that will ever be as good as Silent Hunter 3-4-5 with all the great mods and community that is here. Dear god it was mind numbing to go through a forced tutorial and lack of manual anything. No TDC, No manual targeting, no realism. No keyboard tfor anything except that big red x at the top of the screen to kill the window.

There was no fun in that at all.

Wow!...A bunch of open minded remarks!...That feels like a warm subsim community encouraging and supporting!...

I played that game yesterday and my experience was, that SHO is not fully cooked yet, it is still a beta.

However, I noticed some interesting innovations that I have never seen before in any subsims games or Arcade sub related games.

I could critic to death DW or any SH's. But focusing on the negative does not lead anywhere interesting.

SHO is a game designed not for the hard core subsimers, but for the public at large that might have never been interested by submarines before. Some of that public after an encounter with SHO might turn into a hardcore subsimers wanna be, and might come to subsim/radioroom to know more. And what do you think they will feel when they read some of your remarks?....Do you feel that they will come back!....

Any MOD, Any Game has a humble beginning.

How do you think you spoke, wrote and walked when you were 2 years old?...Do you remember?...Did you get the boot for not being mature yet?

That game is in beta and not fully developed. It will be one day!

I enjoy talking about what I play, and don't waste my time talking about what I don't know, don't play or don't want to play!....

Make a list of innovations you saw in that game you would like to see i.e. in SHIII, IV, V or VI to make that game useful today, because innovations are there, I have seen them.

Tom Clancy SSN was Booed by the critics for being too Arcadish and not subsim enough. Of all the games out there, this is the only one I know that offers "Command Detonate" which is one of the real way a torpedo can be used. Of course, no Hollywood movies ever illustrated that usage, and no one in Subsim ever noticed that it was absent from DW!...How interesting?

I waited about 2 hours to get in. I stayed all of five minutes. The game is awful. It's not even worthy of the title "Silent Hunter." It's basically a submarine shooter, just a little tougher.

I think we must be playing different games. Yes the queues are very long at the moment, but a submarine shooter? Uh, no. Complete the tutorial, which takes around 15 minutes, and then play the campaign for at least a couple of hours before coming to a conclusion. 5 minutes? Nowhere near enough.

There is quite a bit of complexity for a browser based game, and it does a decent enough job of simulating submarine warfare, just without all the bells and whistles of SH5. Finding and engaging convoys is by no means as easy as it first appears, and getting kills still requires a bit of skill. It's not without its faults, especially with regards to the rather intrusive payment system, which seems to monetise virtually everything.

Looks like the quality of a mobile game - beta or not.
Please just start making a AAA standard Silent Hunter 6 World at War and I'll be happy. Why not ask for modders to help create assets to keep costs down? They did better than UBI paid staff.
A free to play online game is a step back if you ask me.

For a browser subsim game its fantastic! Has a good feel and if I can get most of the aids turned off it will be heaps of fun.

..love reading all these flame posts. Especially all the immature sarcastic below the belt remarks about a beta that doesn't stack up to our beloved SH3. Keep it up champs. Keep hammering those nails.

The new graphic engine looks very promising, the game is quite funny to me to play, it is not ok for people who calculated themselves torpedo solutions, cause it is completely automated in this compart. But you still have to approach the convoy the right way, and this takes time... and some skill. It is easier on one side, but require patience on the other, and just few players can stand a hour to approach and sink max 3 ships with a IIA.

Another good point is the wolfpacks: you can invite other players to attack a convoy, and you can find let's say 6 subs / 3 players attacking. This is real funny.

But, on the other side, the login queue simple prevents me to play, right now there are 526 people before me. Beside the ETA reported in the queue window is completely wrong, as UBI said, I can forecast between 2 and 3 hours waiting lo login.

I can follow a convoy for hours, but I can not wait hours to login... in 3 hours I will be at my parents' home for dinner :)

So right now I think this game is enjoyable, but until they fix this queue problem, it will be impossible to play on regular bases, for me at least.

Another good point is the chat: in 5 mins you realize that 99% of the players are not 14 years old trolls (nothing against young men, of course :) ) but kind people answering questions of newbies (as I am :) ) and so on.

I do hope they will fix this queue madness soon.

Bye!

I haven't been able to play because of the queue problem, but even if i don't like it, or even if i don't ever get to play it I hope it does great. I hope it kills, I hope it becomes the next WoW.

Why? because it will broaden the base.

Imagine the distribution of sim players along an axis of difficulty/realism. I'll bet that like many other things it has a roughly bell-shaped curve, with a looong tail towards high realism/difficulty. The bulk of the potential players will be in the middle, because they enjoy or tolerate a moderate difficulty. But they are the majority so they will be targeted by developers. Hard core realistic sims are a fringe. They are marginal, meaning they exist in the margin. The long tail of the distribution. For the margin to be substantial, read economically profitable, the base has to be big.

Take flight sims. If we consider every flight sim, combat or no combat, including the utterly unrealistic space sims, the base is humongous. A minority of players will enjoy the hyperrealistic sims. But this minority, because of the huge base, is sizable enough to attract some developers. So we have great flight sims.

If you've ever wondered why Silent Hunter was the only game in town, and Dangerous waters was left on the side of the road (except for the modders), it's because the subsim base is not big enough to sustain development.

So the best thing that can happen is that everybody and his brother plays silent hunter online. When I see the ridiculous 630 people/ 2 months and a half queue, I don't think "damn ubisoft is screwing the pooch again". I look forward to all those people hungering for more realism, and other companies, or ubisoft itself, noticing.

And I close my browser and smile, waiting patiently for a cold-war nuke sim.

tl;dr : A rising tide lifts all boats

Yes, I think you are right, Mikka. This online free sub game can drive a lot of people to the sub simulator world, and this is anyway good. A queue of 600 as the one I am climbing right now (283 in queue now, after 2 hours...) means that many people is trying it, and reading the in-game chat, I get the sensation many players never tried a SH title before... I hope UBI get rid of the queue ASAP, since the "casual player" will never wait 3 hours to play, not even as an option... well, neither do I lol

But I did... want to buy that damn Flak for my II C :)

Anyway, since there are things like this, out there:

Euro Truck Simulator 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlTuC18xVII

I believe a new sub sim is not impossibile to be seen in the future... :sunny:
Don't get me wrong... trucks are... uhm... well... :)

Pictures of a demonized game!
 

Some pics!

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...psee21de36.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1efc5c8f.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps22a5a35c.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps49ed4735.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...psbcebb513.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps90d9642e.jpg

Paid in gold!

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0c7393df.jpg

Paid in Gold!


http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps86525dd0.jpg

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...ps88b10d74.jpg

The Torpedo clearly explodes under the ship!


It is a nice and pretty introduction for the new generations to the world of Subsims!...I see the questions new gamers ask in game in the public chat window, and I can see they get the right technical answers.

I remember asking questions about sonar in relation to wrecks and sea bed and all I got were short erroneous answers as you can't hide by a wreck, the DD will see you, or the sonar is not disturbed by the closeness of the sea bed, or U-boot never ran deck awashed!...Until someone showed a picture!

After all we are not narcissist, are we?...

SHO is not for or about us, but for and about the generations that were born after us, and where do they start sub simulator gaming.
Will they start with DW or SH III(if they can make it work), SHIV, SHV, SHVI, or SHO?....
We started at level entry with simple game with poor graphics, and they start with SHO. And some guys just don't like that. Some people believe that because it was hard for them it is suppose to be hard for the next one in line. Someone's perception of the world is not the world, but just a tiny perception of it!....The map is not the territory!

Because of us, they can get better and more accurate answers, and they don't have to go through what we went through. It is called progress, civilization!....In the absence of acceptance, and of that transmission of experience, they will become like a lot of us, just plain old narcissists begging for attention in relation to the ordeals we endured at the hands of the generation before us which were just full of their own accomplishments, and believed that to appreciate something you had to earn it the hard way, like it was for them!

SHO is not SHIII GWX. I played both today and I felt the difference, but you wont get people interested in SHIII and the likes, without a first step. SHO is a nice first step.

So, a game like SHO makes a lot of sense to me as a welcome door to a world, and the flak it is getting makes also sense to me, but I know it does not have to be!...Ignorance does not have to lead the way!...Understanding, acceptance and support should!

Way off topic. I just wanted to complement you on that Kitty that comes up and takes the close button away. Hahahaha that's great! :haha:

Are there any realism options , or planned ones ?

I've tried to play it but I have no patience for games that make you wait and want you to pay for items that make the game playable. Sadly more and more game companies are going that route. I really wish they'd do like Valve and release a game that's playable stock with uninterrupted play but getting access to the cool stuff with one time transactions, not recurring ones.