My 2 cents.
 

First , i want to qualify this by saying im not what would be considered a hardcore subsimmer, certainly not a grognard , and very certainly not a designer ,
. I am a bit older , I began my gaming with dice . I .. began to like sh5 , especially after modding the hell out of it . And true they made some very basic mistakes with the game ,
The absence of later sub models was unexcusable , and i think they originally meant to release an expansion but since it floundered like it did they didnt put any more into it , Thats all just supposition though . The DRM , I will tolerate , As a sign of the times .
........................I dont see the harm in any new release , I would love to see a new release of any kind of subsim actually . bad or good , And who releases it i dont really care , More new subsim = good .
On another note , I cannot help to think when playing games like .. say ... GTA4 , That the technology is there already to create a very good subsim , GTA has rendered an entire city , People , vehicles and all ( mmmm ,What would Rockstars subsim be like ?),
and while i understand that rendering the ocean itself is a special challenge , ( I while much time away watching blender water simulations on YT ) I cannot but think that the tech is here and readily accessible .
I wonder if perhaps this online thing might pan out to be something enjoyable , and on a platform that facilitates expansion .
I ask the same questions about it as everyone else , what about time compression ?, what about griefers in a multiplayer environment ? But if they have a vision , I would like to see it .
I dont comment much here so this may well be out of place , and irrelevant even , I wish to take the time to express the awe i have of this community and the people who create the mods i so enjoy , If i were designing the next subsim ,I would certainly recruit some of these sharp minds .
So ,, Heres hoping that the next subsim is released while i can still enjoy it . and that is has all crew members rendered , doing their tasks , and the ships are to scale , and the oil covers the sea and ignites in a fury of black smoke and orange glow , and the screams are .... sorry got away from myself .

I'm not sure a development studio would risk sinking the type of budget required for GTAIV into a Subsim, but I take your point about the possibility and tech.

There is of course nothing stopping you from taking something like the SDK for CryEngine3 and using it as a free platform for subsim development. The advantage there is you could experiment/demo with it for free with the option of moving to a licensed model with capital investment or leaving it as a community project. Time and effort being the limiting factors...

We'll see soon enough if SH:Online has substance. :hmm2:

I still game with dice, and on a regular basis. There is nothing that compares to talking to friends over a gaming table.

And yet there were very good reasons for it. Had they included the other models it still might not be released today.

The DRM has been gone for the better part of a year. I was one of many who refused to buy SH5 while it was there. Now I own a copy even though my computer won't run it.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=189245

It's alright. Your 2 cents is not wasted anyway.

Dice gaming and the old days .
 

Steve , I dont know how many people would even know who Gary Gygax is , I am amused when i see people complaining that WoW ripped off EQ, and this one ripped off that one , they all ripped off Gary ,And i guess il have to admit he ripped off Tolkein ...


Its notable how many games still rely on armor class and hitpoints . I had nearly a full set of the original edition D&D books ,
The players guide , the dms guide, with the ugly artwork on the face , lost now .Is it Right to feel pride that ive seen it all happen from the basics,
I knew then that computers were going to change the gaming world , To roll the dice for us so to speak...,

Remember when they Blamed these things for all sorts of evils of society ?

I understand about the sub models , maybe unexusable was a poor choice of words .
It was perhaps unfortunate that they werent there , Its a carrot to drive the game IMO .
The DRM, i bought the game when it was still there , I found it distasteful , but not a dealbreaker . I understand that they have lots of money invested , and given the choice , people will generally spend a dollars worth of time to get a dimes worth of product free,
Piracy .. in its various forms has effected the music , and gaming business . I see it as a thing that we will have to learn to deal with .

I have been enjoying World of tanks for some time now , I like the format they use , Free to play , and still not pay to win , but you can make life a lot easier by coming off a few dollars . Pay per month games-WOW , and perhaps EVE are short lived IMO ( Maybe EVE is a special case they have been working hard on it lately ) ), As this new format will slowly eclipse them , If they keep doing it right , which i believe WOT is doing .
BigBangtheory ,

I fall into that category of people who enjoy games , can appreciate coding on an elementary level , but i am no coder nor designer , Ive tried my hand at learning some basics .
It was an infernal challenge for me in the beginning just to Mod SH.
And thats why my hat is off to the guys who can dig around in the guts of the machine and make it do what they want .I cannot hoe where they plow .

Personally i dont like where the SH series has been going.

I really like SH3, i absolutely love SH4, but when i got to SH5 i just got a "MEH" sort of feeling. And when i heard they were going to make a MMO, i kinda lost all hope.

Simulation games are not MMO material. Even the mentioned WoT is arcadey at best. And thats good so, but when i think Silent Hunter i think simulation.

But we shall see how it all plays out i guess.

I dunno, I have SH4 and played it extensively, but the gameplay is little more than randomly generated intercepts and approaches, and there is no larger goal in the campaign except "survive this encounter". If this online game has a global campaign that can be influenced by player action that's a massive improvement IMO. Something like Pirates! where yes it is dynamic but there's still a big picture to fill in as you go.

Personally id love to see them do what starshatter did.

Basically both sides have a finite amount of ships. Each ship destroyed is gone for good. With AI engagements happening and so on.

Basically turn the whole thing in to a "What if" scenario. That would also mean that crippling an assault fleet would give your guys a bigger chance to win and so on.

But i just dont see it working at all as a MMO.

Maybe it isn't an MMO MMO.

MMO and subsims
 

Megla,
The point you are making about mmo and subsim compatability is the one that has been on my mind also ,
One of my favorite things to do with sh5 is just sit on the obv deck and listen to the waves crash on the hull ,
Just cruising out of port in realtime watching the shore go by ,Thats my Immersion.

I made another post remarking that the video on YT , showed graphics , Just cutscenes most likely but even so , the Graphics in the video are pretty amazing , I remarked that you were going to have to have a pretty heavy duty rig to run graphics like that ,
And someone who knows more about these things than i posted that because its browser based ,machine specs wouldnt be that important .
That ... that raises some interesting questions in my mind .. Because if that is true then we could really see a leap forward in graphics , And at least for me ,, Graphics are my number 1 concern when it comes to immersion .

That trailer has to be prerendered. Everything in it looks too blurry to be ingame graphics.

Just like real life, which is the point of a 'sim'.

And that's exactly what will keep me away from it. Less 'sim' and more 'game'. Thanks but no thanks.

I don't see how completely ignoring player actions in the campaign is "just like real life". For instance, it is possible to sneak into Tokyo Bay early in 1942 and sinking a whole lot of battleships and carriers and if this had been done IRL such an action would have massively impacted future events like Midway or Coral Sea, but all that happens in SH4 is another Yamato or Akagi is randomly spawned later as if they come off a never-ending supplyline. Is that really more true to real life? At the end of the day I don't really care much for "realism" if it negatively impacts the fun factor by turning the game into a meaningless grind. Sure you can spend hours sneaking into this or that harbor and doing all kinds of daredevil, beat-the-odds attacks or sink 15 Yamatos but the only noticeable impact it has on the game is your personal tonnage.

This is why I've always preferred the dynamic campaign as it was done in Red Storm Rising where you can readily lose the war if you are not careful and events can be unpredictable. Strike Fighters does this too and its campaigns have lot more replayability than SH4.

I recommend you read these links -

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ghlight=onlive

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ghlight=onlive

And particularly TDW's post in the latter. :yep:

That's a good point, and true. I would counter-argue that sneaking into Tokyo bay is as unrealstic as you can get, being impossible. I do agree that ships should not respawn. Supposedly that was fixed in SH5.


I guess I've been playing subsims so long that the "meaningless grind" is what appeals to me. Unfortunately the only raid on a major naval base was Prien's expedition to Scapa Flow, and that required prior planning at the highest levels. That you can sneak into a base that has battleships and carriers at all is something I find most annoying in these games. It wasn't done because it couldn't be done.

As I've said elsewhere, in LucasArts' Their Finest Hour: The Battle Of Britain you could play the German side and actually end up with a successful invasion. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened that way, but replayability? I did it twice and ended up bored. For me a campaign like AOD/SH3/SH4 is just about perfect.