A CALL TO UBISOFT GUYS !

[BigBANGtheory]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

My 2 cents: Ubisoft put their backs into SH3 and SH4, and were on the way with SH5 before their resources were exhausted before completion. Say what you will about them, they gave us the best WWII submarine simulations, really the only WWII subsims, since 1997.

Making a high fidelity simulation that will please just a fraction of the high demands and expectations of the customers is resource intensive, and that means expensive. When the sales don't add up to a profit, well, there's no business in losing money.

Eagle Dynamics with DCS managed it

Ubisoft showed us some immense skill in software/games development in many areas then totally ballzd up the customer care, you can't sell an unfinished product, drop all support and expect people to be happy about it. The ammount of reputation damage they got from Cliffs of Dover and SH must be pretty costly. Ubisoft is anti-consumer imho

[Aktungbby]

Devin Seay!A bit belatedly; pardon our poor manners!

[makman94]

Originally Posted by BigBANGtheory

Eagle Dynamics with DCS managed it

Ubisoft showed us some immense skill in software/games development in many areas then totally ballzd up the customer care, you can't sell an unfinished product, drop all support and expect people to be happy about it. The ammount of reputation damage they got from Cliffs of Dover and SH must be pretty costly. Ubisoft is anti-consumer imho

Pretty much agree

[deicide]

Well I hate to be the turd in the punch bowl....but...

I really don't see where SH5 has hurt UBI at all.

They have one of the top 3 selling titles for the PS4 right now with Far Cry, which is also still in the top 10 for PS3.
Their Rainbow series still sells and plays very well, Assasins Creed is still a #1 seller for all systems.
Watch Dogs was something totally different and has a replay value that very few games have.
The Might and Magic series has a very dedicated group of followers, I don't know to many younger people who don't (or at least at one time did) have at least one version of Rocksmith. Splinter Cell was also another top selling franchise.

So to think that botching one very niche release or even 2 or 3 really hurt them is absolutely ridiculous.
UbiSoft is a business and even if they made the best Subsim ever known it's sales would be maybe...maybe 1/100th
of their other major titles. So in reality I think about 3/4th through SH5 the people with the money put the
big red X on the development of the game. It's not the dev's fault!!!
If you were at work working on a project and your supervisor came to you and said "Stop wasting time on this project, we're
scrapping it" my guess would be you would move on to whatever they told you the next project was.
Yet the people with the money wanted some return so they released it! Once again not the dev's fault!!!

I see some people mentioning DCS. While I do think it's a great platform lets not forget the scandal with DCS WWII: Europe 1944.
I was one of the donators that was supposed to be at a level to receive several free aircraft modules, then the project was "sold"
to Eagle Dynamics. After EG took over they cut the originally promised rewards by 50%+ and claimed they were not responsible for refunds
or rewards originally made by RRG Development. Even though EG now owns RRG and used it's kickstarter funds for development of said title.

If anyone really wants to put out a good Subsim I would suggest looking at the way Kerbal Space Program was developed.
Years and years of beta's and listening to the end consumer with tweaks and upgrades along the way and those of us who
sprang the $30 for the early release got the final release as an update (just this week). I would also hazard a guess that
the guys at Squad made very little if anything and did it more for the love of the project!


Sorry for the rambling, Been off work on disabilty for quite a few weeks and half a bottle of Glen Livet's will do that
to a guy!!!!

-deicide


Edit: Sorry for the spacing, wrote this in notepad and didn't realize it would look like that!! heh

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by deicide

Sorry for the rambling

Really? It seemed quite concise and direct to me. Of course I don't know anything about it, but what you said makes sense to me.

[BigBANGtheory]

Originally Posted by deicide

I really don't see where SH5 has hurt UBI at all.

Ok so where it has hurt them is reputation damage, Ubisoft are known to abandon projects and products at the cost to their customers to protect their own interests. They are incapable of releasing and supporting a simulation game because it seems at odds with their business model.

Commercially of course they have invested in the high value cross platform titles and IP and basically going where the money is. They are a console 1st now....

DCS 1944 thing was a joint venture that went wrong RRG seemed to under estimate the effort to deliver it imho. Here is the important bit Eagle Dynamics took it over and also will shortly be giving away their Nevada Terrain free to beta A10-C owners who expected it in the vanilla product. The point there is Eagle Dynamics have a sustainable business model that works for sims and when something goes wrong (i.e. 1944 and NTTR) they do something about it. Where DCS excels imho is the devs understand you have to achieve a certain lvl of quality above all else.

Sims need a means for the developer to profit by their continued support and updates over many years. Ubisoft don't want that they want to push a product out as cheaply as possible, rake in the cash and move on with zero customer interaction.

So imho a commercial software/games developer should look at a naval DCS style model. The Kerbal SP example could work, you would need a passion for the genre to make it work.

[deicide]

Originally Posted by BigBANGtheory

Ok so where it has hurt them is reputation damage, Ubisoft are known to abandon projects and products at the cost to their customers to protect their own interests. They are incapable of releasing and supporting a simulation game because it seems at odds with their business model.

Commercially of course they have invested in the high value cross platform titles and IP and basically going where the money is. They are a console 1st now....

DCS 1944 thing was a joint venture that went wrong RRG seemed to under estimate the effort to deliver it imho. Here is the important bit Eagle Dynamics took it over and also will shortly be giving away their Nevada Terrain free to beta A10-C owners who expected it in the vanilla product. The point there is Eagle Dynamics have a sustainable business model that works for sims and when something goes wrong (i.e. 1944 and NTTR) they do something about it. Where DCS excels imho is the devs understand you have to achieve a certain lvl of quality above all else.

Sims need a means for the developer to profit by their continued support and updates over many years. Ubisoft don't want that they want to push a product out as cheaply as possible, rake in the cash and move on with zero customer interaction.

So imho a commercial software/games developer should look at a naval DCS style model. The Kerbal SP example could work, you would need a passion for the genre to make it work.

So a person (me) who pledged over $1700 and got less than 1/3rd of what was promised to me is supposed to now support a DCS style model..... ummmmm no thanks. DCS will never be on ANY hard drive or remote drive or network drive I ever own!!! They ripped me off for well over $1000 and NEVER delivered what they promised!!

As far as the Squad guys with Kerbal they always gave me more than what I paid for. So yeah I will support people who are passionate over people who are just looking to make a profit anyday!!!! And that is what DCS has become.. I mean really $200 plus for some of the modules they offer. lol
I can get a flight in a real F18 here in Madison, Wi at Truax Airport for that price.

The fact that it has been shown they ripped people off for thousands of dollars yet fanboy/girls still keep singing the praises is beyond my comprehension! However I am glad some people are getting enjoyment off MY $$$ because I never will.

-deicide

[sshellokitty]

Although I don't know the details and probably never will, SH5 seems like the perfect example of a publisher forcing their developer to put out a game before it is completed. All of the bugs that are in the game just make it so apparent that the build is more like an alpha or beta build - mostly feature complete but in need of testing. This happens so much with Ubisoft that I don't know how they are still a company. I really wish they would go out of business and sell off all of their licenses. Then again EA would probably buy up all of their studios and licenses and EA isn't all that great either.

Of course all of this is terrible because a developer, game designer, artist, or anyone actually working on the project wants it to be the best that it can be and have players enjoy the experience and have fun. I think if you read any comment section of a developer site like Gamasutra you will see that people are in the video game industry because they love making games and don't want to be forced to put out buggy crap that player's don't like.

I still think that if there is a strong enough will to do a WW2 subsim game than it could be made independently through crowd funding. As a game designer, military veteran, and WW2 armchair historian I would sprint at the chance to work on this type of project (as I've said in many posts). It would just be an immense undertaking that couldn't be done alone.

[BigBANGtheory]

Originally Posted by deicide

So a person (me) who pledged over $1700 and got less than 1/3rd of what was promised to me is supposed to now support a DCS style model..... ummmmm no thanks. DCS will never be on ANY hard drive or remote drive or network drive I ever own!!! They ripped me off for well over $1000 and NEVER delivered what they promised!!

As far as the Squad guys with Kerbal they always gave me more than what I paid for. So yeah I will support people who are passionate over people who are just looking to make a profit anyday!!!! And that is what DCS has become.. I mean really $200 plus for some of the modules they offer. lol
I can get a flight in a real F18 here in Madison, Wi at Truax Airport for that price.

The fact that it has been shown they ripped people off for thousands of dollars yet fanboy/girls still keep singing the praises is beyond my comprehension! However I am glad some people are getting enjoyment off MY $$$ because I never will.

-deicide

You paid for nothing, what you did was risk your money on a Kickstarter campaign rather than waiting for a released product that would have cost a fraction of that. I've never paid more than $40 for any module, hell their premier A10-C, FC3 and BS2 products are $16 each atm so who is getting ripped off exactly and where are these $200 modules?

[JU_88]

Its 2015 now and its plain that Ubisoft are done with Silent Hunter, (And likewise many Silent Hunter fans are pretty much done with Ubisoft.)
Ubisoft killed it just by being Ubisoft - impatient and stubborn with customers and even with their own developers, of course if you asked them, I'm sure they would give you a politicians speech with lots of finger pointing to external market forces. Because at Ubisoft "Its everyone elses fault" is virtually the company motto.

I hope for a new Subsim too, but from another developer, its high time for someone else to take shot at it. Silent hunter kind of needed to die to make that more likely.
I'm quietly hopeful as WWII themed games seem to be making a bit of a come back at the moment. The market for a good Subsim might be too modest in size for the likes of Ubisoft, but its certainly isn't for other developers who know how to work it.
The main problem is perhaps dealing with the slow pacing that comes with submarine warfare, that puts a spanner in works for having submarines included in a fast paced brawler MMO like WT or WOW, but something with two layers like Heroes and Generals could be make to work possibly.
Its probably just a matter of time, i'd expect we would see something before the end of this decade, but its just impossible to say where/who it would come from.

WOTA looks good, but its still a Mobile platform / Indy game with just one (very passionate) guy working on it, I wouldn't hold huge expectations, it looks like it will be a very nice addition to sub sims - but its probably not going to be the game that single handedly replaces the Silent Hunter franchise.