Silent Hunter Online

[RAM]

Ok, I'll chime in and give some thoughts. Guess it'd be a long post.

-As for today I still play SH3 and SH4. Games I bought in the moment they were released, and games I had some terrible DRM issues with to the point that I wasn't even able to play SH4 for a whole month after purchasing it.

-Both sims were on the brink of being unplayable when released, with a lot of bugs and prominent UI/gameplay missing features.

-Both sims were officially dropped by Ubisoft before they were anywhere near completed. Once they got the feeling the cow was milked enough, and that sales wouldn't really make them richer, they pulled the plug alltogether and good ridance.

-Both sims I still play because from being almost unplayable stock they have turned into absolute jewels and impressive experience thanks to the modding community.

-The true, absolute and total true is that if the Silent Hunter series has had the success it has had as a franchise is because a handful of totally selfless individuals who undertook (repeatedly in each game iteration) the HUGE task of developing mods. And not minor mods to fix or tweak minor stuff... actual monster-sized mods that totally changed the way the game looked like, sounded like, played like. Go and compare SH3 stock or with GWX3 or NYGM mega-mods. They're totally different experiences to the point to say that SH3 was a GAME (and barely enjoyable or playable, at that), yet SH3 with either of those mods is as close as a WWII submarine simulation as you can get given the frameworks and limits imposed by the code.

-To state what I said avobe in short words: the only reason SH series has been a sucesfull franchise has been the modding community. Plain and simple. Without it I highly doubt SH would've made past SH3, much less SH4.

-as a corolary of the above mentioned statement, one must conclude that the only thing UBI has done for the SH series has been hiring developer teams to create (or in fact, evolve, because SH3 and SH4 are just evolutions or iterations with different scenario settings) the game framework just to sell it and get cash from it, to then pull the plug ASAP and move forward to some other milking-cow project. What has made this series what it is and what has made SH succesful, again, has been the mods. Not the publisher (by far) nor the developers (who I get the feeling have the same reason to be "happy" with ubisoft as we do). THe mods.

-Enter SH5. What they did with that was just unspeakable of. I don't need to mention the reasons, we all know about them here. But then again a bassically flawed simulation with a bassically flawed implementation of an otherwise interesting concept that was utter, total and unfathomable crap on release has been turned into an actually pretty decent, enjoyable sim. By whom?. The modders. All the developers did (all Ubisoft let them do before pulling the plug) was release two patches that did help solving some of the most embarrasing stuff but let the game almost as flawed in 1.2 as it was in 1.0.

-Now we hear of SHO. A MMO game based in a web browser (?). In other words, an UNMODDABLE game per definition. So they're just let the whole reason SH series has been succesfull -ergo, the modders- out of the equation, and we're left in the open, so we can just take what the developers give us (under the ever-prying eyes of the always too-happy-to-pull-the-plug UBISOFT) and deal with it wether we like or not.


-And we get a guy here who tells us to blame the publisher, but not punish the developers for it. While I sympathize with them, dude, sorry, but if you sign a contract with the devil, expect the worst. If you accepted a contract with one of the most outrageously insensitive publishers in the market at anything related to community interaction, you're subjected to go through what you're going here. Noone believes in UBISOFT, hence noone here believes in a game developed under their control area. You sign with an unreliable publisher, you reap the results of what -THEY- have sown for years now. It's inevitable.

-even more inevitable when all those who have made this series what it is now (peaking at SH3/SH4) are a bunch of dedicated guys who are totally left out of the project and will be handcuffed to solve or tweak any mess the developers WILL (and I don't say "might", I say WILL, and I have plenty of prededents to say so, the least of those not being the fact that the whole web-browser concept is bollocks and uncapable of dealing with all the things a proper U-boat subsim shold be able to do) do out of this game.




See, here's a plan to a viable MMO based on the Silent hunter series. Ubisoft should take notes because is the only freakin' way I'm going to fire up anything related with SH published under that brand EVER AGAIN.

-contract a good game developer

-give them SH3/SH4 source code

-Hire the services of all those, or at least the most prominent amongst those, who made GWX/NYGM/TMO/OM/etc. megamods for those games, and those who've shown utter brilliance in turning SH5 from a stinking pile of steaming turd into an actually enjoyable game (Trevally, TDW, Sober, etc...list is long as heck).

-give them a free ticket to get the SH3/SH4 iteration to be able to work into a MMO-iteration, and to work out the details of a WORKABLE, REALISTIC, POLISHED, ---SIMULATION--- multiplayer experience.

-get in the most interesting parts of SH5 (ability to first-person navigate into the submarine), get rid of all its stupid concepts (RPG interaction other than for flavor, magical skills, stupid missions, etc)

-Include some interesting concepts that MMO allow for that aren't workable for offline simulators in (The only thing that has never been implemented in the SH even by the most thorough modding attempts series was...? you guessed, WOLFPACKS!)

-Release the game as a work in progress (fully enjoyable as released, with the promise and perspective for the user of A LOT of new, brilliant, stuff coming integrated into the game as time passes by), cash in a retail ammount of money and then implement a balanced monthly fee to cover costs and make a decent profit out of it.

-Commit SERIOUSLY to the project. I for once wouldn't trust any MMO-related stuff with ubisoft because I know how happy pull-the-plug they are, so there should be some legal compromise in the EULA about a proper promise of supporting the project and development at least for a couple years.


WHO in this forum, WHO, in a mature player target audience interested in serious naval subsims, wouldn't pay at least a monthly 15$ for -THAT-?.


Instead we get a web browser travesty, and depend on the good will of Ubisoft to turn it into- FIRST- a real sub simulator, SECOND- an enjoyable one, and THIRD- one that will last for more than 6 months before they pull the plug.


Sorry, free or not, this BS I'm not trying.


PS: and for the record I'll insist: if the developers wanted to be received with another mindset from the community they should never have done a deal with ubisoft in the first place, and never have accepted such a STUPID, conceptually flawed, implementation for a WWII U-boat based simulator released under the Silent Hunter brand. You signed the deal, now deal with the SERIOUS subsim community not wanting to give UBISOFT a try, nor wanting to deal with an horrendous idea and implementation.

In other words, don't blame us for not wanting to deal with the BS that will inevitably come out of it. Blame the guy who signed over the dots with Ubisoft.


That's all I have to say about the topic. Sorry about the brickwall text I just wrote...I'm just infuriated by UBISOFT, how they treated the franchise and how they ignore the guys who filled their pockets with cash. The modders.

[Iron Budokan]

RAM, you're just venting what a lot of us already feel about this company and the way it treats customers. No need to apologize.

[Dive! Dive! Dive!]

We have a mind reader on SUBSIM! That is pretty much what I feel about SHO and probably the majority of people on the site!

[artao]

All I really need to know about this game was in the preview video:
British accents on a German u-boat attacking a British convoy.
<facepalm>

FAIL

EDIT: Well said RAM. .. however, I, for one, would definitely NOT shell out $15/mo for an MMO subsim. nope. .. you realize that's $180/year to play a game, yes? ... bleh .... MMOs, bleh =]

[Dive! Dive! Dive!]

In the actual game the Royal Navy will speak German .

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by artao

however, I, for one, would definitely NOT shell out $15/mo for an MMO subsim. nope. .. you realize that's $180/year to play a game, yes? ... bleh .... MMOs, bleh =]

I won't pay any monthly charge to play any game. They're definitely losing out on me I will pay a flat fee for a game (boxed version) and that's it.

[bill clarke]

So, I take it we won't get a ship sim from them any time soon

[CaptainCruise]

Originally Posted by RAM

Ok, I'll chime in and give some thoughts. Guess it'd be a long post............

Long post or not, it was a pleasure to read. Excellent post.



"CC"

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by CaptainCruise

Long post or not, it was a pleasure to read. Excellent post.

Very well thought out and written.