SH4 also needs a complete integration of the U-Boat war, not just a band aid add-on. There is absolutely no reason why a single game cannot have ALL of SH3 plus SH4 plus fixes incorporated, like a spherical earth, completely rewritten targeting system to give you an authentic maneuvering board along with more authentic navigation.
It should incorporate the tools the real submariners used in their work, bearing rate tables, stadimeter plots, the entire shebang from the Submarine Torpedo Fire Control Manual, is-was, sextant, more TDC functions.
All this code should be carefully documented so that no fiasco like SH4, where a new dev team was assembled to build on SH3 but discovered that to them, SH3 was just an assembly of incomprehensible black boxes. So they used the black boxes they didn't understand and screwed up lots of things that actually worked right in SH3 but are nerfed in SH4 due to incompetence.
Then Ubi flat out lied to us, telling us that SH4 was brought to us by the same crack team that developed SH3. WRONG!
The drink coaster method of game producing must die. Disbanding dev teams who hit a home run and replacing them with poor draft picks for the sequel is always going to have the same very predictable result. Dev teams must stay together to use what they learned to improve the game.
Then versions have to die. Why is there a SH3 and SH4? It's because they are drink coasters, worth nothing a month after they are released to the market. There should only be Silent Hunter, a continuously evolving and improving game, using all the good stuff they have ever developed and fixing once and for all every bug they developed. It should be updated weekly or monthly and the update released to all who subscribe. Yes, subscribe. And the subscription price should be less than the cost of buying all the drink coasters upon release.
People should pay Ubi or whoever wants to do the job right to make a great simulation that works better and better, not to produce a drink coaster, walk away and then say "we have a NEW drink coaster! TRUST US this time. We won't screw the pooch like last time." That game is very old. I'll never own SH5 or any future drink coaster that pretends to be the next big thing in submarine simulation until people I respect act as guinea pigs and say it's what we've been waiting for. NO MORE SH5s. Ever. When we buy we tell them to kick us again.
I'm done being kicked. I'll gladly buy what I want. Until I see it my money stays securely in my pocket.
SHO is a great experiment. I don't expect it to be a replacement for SH4. If it is a strategy and tactical game of some excellence it will be a step in the right direction. But it will be something other than a submarine simulation as most people on this site define it.
I believe that the most we can hope for SHO is the it opens the door for real progress. Most likely it will just be misinterpreted by Ubi and they will go off on a Sims meets first person shooter popcorn casual game. Hope they're successful but that would mean that we look elsewhere for the simulation we want.
|