Silent Hunter Online

[Gotmilk]

No way we should give this junk a chance. Have you seen the screenshots?

In one screenshot you can see things like "visibility meter" and just look at this stupid chat window. "Global chat" "wish list" "guild chat" "trade"

Hey here is an idea. Lets form a Subsim guild and dominate the atlantic

For me the one thing is clear. There is NEVER going to be a SH6 and UBI just wanted to use a well known game. So they took silent hunter and made arcade style mediocre mmo. Its probably gonna be something like Farmville but only with submarines.

The kids or so called "casual gamers" will probably love it but its a spit to the face of the people who supported SH franchise all those years.

[Hawk66]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

Exciting as in WW2-exciting. Or Hunt for the Red October-exciting. Or Red Storm Rising-exciting. Red Storm Rising managed to portray 1980's submarine ops in an intense and exciting manner because it went for a big, WW2-style shooting war against a numerically superior enemy.

DW on the other hand portrays modern ops much like the small-scale skirmishes one would realistically expect post-USSR and as a result is rather more dull. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice some realism in order to craft a fun experience. Even milsims like ARMA do this to some extent. As it is, such a hardcore sim as DW will never cater to anyone but the most hardcore simmer, which is about as niche as it gets. It can have all the merits in the world in regards to systems modelling etc but that doesn't matter when the stock scenarios it ships with are unimaginative and mundane.

Concerning DW: You have the toolbox at your fingertips to create any mission you like, also 'unrealistic ones'...I do not see where the problem is.
It is also in general possible to create your own scenario generator, since the necessary files are in an open, unencrypted format available.

You refer to Arma: Actually, here it is the same: the (major) content comes from the community, BIS provides the framework/sandbox.

The issue is that far more people are interested in a 3D infantry combat simulator than in a modern naval simulator.

[lmy76128]

Originally Posted by Gotmilk

No way we should give this junk a chance. Have you seen the screenshots?

In one screenshot you can see things like "visibility meter" and just look at this stupid chat window. "Global chat" "wish list" "guild chat" "trade"

Hey here is an idea. Lets form a Subsim guild and dominate the atlantic

For me the one thing is clear. There is NEVER going to be a SH6 and UBI just wanted to use a well known game. So they took silent hunter and made arcade style mediocre mmo. Its probably gonna be something like Farmville but only with submarines.

The kids or so called "casual gamers" will probably love it but its a spit to the face of the people who supported SH franchise all those years.

i agree what you said

[Julhelm]

Originally Posted by Hawk66

Concerning DW: You have the toolbox at your fingertips to create any mission you like, also 'unrealistic ones'...I do not see where the problem is.
It is also in general possible to create your own scenario generator, since the necessary files are in an open, unencrypted format available.

And this is the major flaw. I have maybe 2hrs a week where I can sit down and play games, and I want to spend my time playing games and as such I have no interest in installing tons of mods and learning to code my own missions just to have some fun. If I pay good money for a game I sort of expect it to come with some decent missions, not having to create them myself. Which is why DW and all the other Sonalysts sims remain shelved indefinitely here while I play RSR and Fast Attack instead.

If Red Storm Rising could ship with a dynamic campaign with an infinite number of scenarios, and Fast Attack could ship with hundreds of scripted scenarios, why couldn't Sonalysts? They even reused the same ship models that shipped with Fleet Command, which is the height of laziness and another flaw - if you want to target more lite simmers, you can't ship a product in 2006 with shipmodels from 1998.

If I buy a subsim, I want to drive submarines, not tool around in editors. I do that **** for a living already.

And ARMA, sandbox or not, always came with a pretty decent SP campaign. As does Strike Fighters.

But I suppose we are actually talking past each other here.

[Hawk66]

I see your points...but may I point you to the fact that DW shipped with a pretty decent semi-dynamic campaign, which received high praises - also from non naval game magazines like gamespot.

What is missing in DW is a more sophisticated (random) mission generator but that's also valid for Arma II...

In general if you want to just jump into a game, to relax from a stressful day than hardcore sims is the wrong choice IMO - especially DW, which is slow-paced due to its simulated platforms. I consider this more as a kind of a serious hobby like building model planes and that stuff.

So, I guess there will be never a DW Online game...

...Usually I am not a nostalgic guy...but I have to remember the good old 80's, when I was a teen and there were at least two very good sims released each year...

Perhaps it is also an outcome of our fast-paced way to life - at least in the West. Personally, I do not know a lot of people in 'real life', who are addicted to one topic and are spending their spare time with it...

[Julhelm]

That's the thing, though: I don't want hardcore sims. Nor do I want arcade games. I want lite sims which are geared more towards gameplay than realism. The problem with the reviews on gamespot et all is that they all tend to have one journalist who is a hardcore simmer and he gets sent all the sim-type games the others in the office won't touch. So it's not surprising that DW's campaign recieved praises. It's a perfectly realistic and very plausible contemporary scenario and that's where it fails for me because I don't find contemporary to be anywhere near as interesting as NATO vs Warsaw Pact.

Same reason I'm not very excited about SHO even though it potentially is geared towards me - it's U-Boats again. Big Yawn.

[Shiplord]

At the Developer-Conference in Berlin last Friday one of the BlueByte mamagers said they have already over 2 million registered users with their last F2P game "Settlers Online" and a large part of them also use the ingame item shop for real money. The game has received several awards in the gaming industry and they want to continue this success with another popular brand series of Ubisoft.

[chun]

Originally Posted by Gotmilk

No way we should give this junk a chance. Have you seen the screenshots?

In one screenshot you can see things like "visibility meter" and just look at this stupid chat window. "Global chat" "wish list" "guild chat" "trade"

Hey here is an idea. Lets form a Subsim guild and dominate the atlantic

For me the one thing is clear. There is NEVER going to be a SH6 and UBI just wanted to use a well known game. So they took silent hunter and made arcade style mediocre mmo. Its probably gonna be something like Farmville but only with submarines.

The kids or so called "casual gamers" will probably love it but its a spit to the face of the people who supported SH franchise all those years.

[i2Cold]

This game will succeed I assure you. As i stated before this is a F2P game which means the developpers are gonna stay focused on this project. Look at any F2P game (Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free , APB Reloaded, MicroVolts) They're all F2P games and always have new updates and patches.Besides Silent Hunter V didn't have beta. But Silent Hunter Online will have a beta. Beta is only to test the game and search for bugs. So if there is a beta for this game they will fix the bugs.

[Hinrich Schwab]

Originally Posted by i2Cold

This game will succeed I assure you. As i stated before this is a F2P game which means the developpers are gonna stay focused on this project. Look at any F2P game (Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free , APB Reloaded, MicroVolts) They're all F2P games and always have new updates and patches.Besides Silent Hunter V didn't have beta. But Silent Hunter Online will have a beta. Beta is only to test the game and search for bugs. So if there is a beta for this game they will fix the bugs.

Where does your misplaced faith and litany of assumptions come from? Most of the members here have observed Ubisoft for a number of years. The F2P model is schmuck bait to make players pay for in-game items and equipment that make the game worth playing. F2P players always get stuck with crap equipment and the worst of the worst in terms of of anything. All F2P games are a gamble in that respect.

Ubisoft has repeatedly proven that if there is not MAJOR profit, it will screw its consumers. I guarantee that if this does not pull a major profit in a quarter or so, they will drop this just as hard as they did SH5. Period.

Also, as I joked earlier, using Flash/ActionScript for this project is a recipe for disaster. Flash is a MAJOR resource hog, is subject to the bizarre update whims of Adobe and worst of all, stores all of its data in temporary flash files that are deleted when most internet cleanup programs are run. This means that players are either unable to delete local data or are reliant on Ubi servers to store data...and Ubi has already proven they cannot do THAT right.

[Julhelm]

Well Rise of Flight is F2P as well and that has held up pretty well, as has World of Tanks. I'll reserve judgement until I have tried out the game for sure, but U-boats? Meh. They'll have to work hard to get me excited about that, lol.

[elanaiba]

There is a difference between free 2 play and Pay 2 win, western-made games are not normally of the latter type. See for example Team Fortress 2 ...

[Hinrich Schwab]

Originally Posted by elanaiba

There is a difference between free 2 play and Pay 2 win, western-made games are not normally of the latter type. See for example Team Fortress 2 ...

Granted, but one can only be disappointed so many times before no more faith remains.

[i2Cold]

I see a lot of people in F2P games that didn't buy in game material with real money. Nobody forces you too it's like that with all F2P's Not just silent hunter.

[7thSeal]

Originally Posted by Wolfstriked

If it fails it fails for them and they lose their job.I wish them luck.

SH5 wasn't exactly a sim but a migration to console, it didn't fail and you're expecting the next game to lean toward PC? Heck even the 'online' phase is enough to see that it won't be a sim. But if sim gamers run out and buy it then what the heck no failures or jobs lost and business goes on as usual.