Well its late 1944 and USS Harder is on what I think will be her last voyage before the scrap heap of post WWII. I am fighting whats left of the jap navy and the targets are few and far between. I will look back on the glory days of SH4 and the TMO. The game is losing interest and I look forward to SH5 as I will once again roam the Atlantic in search of the prize. I will slip Das Boot once more into the DVD Player and wait..............Otto shall return.

Sheesh! SH4 has a lot of life in her yet. She's nowhere near seeing her prime, even. Only Ubi wants her dead. We don't need to be helping with that.

Personally, I'm playing and working to improve SH4 until SH5 proves it is a worthy successor. There will be no premature purchase. The drink coaster business model is not a friend of ours, it destroys simulations before they can be their best. It works fine for popcorn FPS games, but is an insult to the simulation genre and an insult to us, the players of simulations.

SH5 must earn my interest and my money. Cooperating in the drink coaster production just out of foolish reflex action is working against myself and every other player of submarine simulations.

The major defect in Ubi simulations isn't bugs or badly thought out interfaces or any defect in software, it's a defective business model that limits Ubi's income while it gives us a new bag of bugs every couple of years and does not optimize existing games.

Unless we refuse to play drink coaster roulette, Ubi has no reason to find a better way. We're not 13 year-old Ratchet and Clank players and we shouldn't be treated that way.

My guess is with all games, it will take awhile for SH5 to reach it's potential, patches, mods, ect. I'll buy it to support it, because I think it will eventually be a great game.

When I got SH4, I actually played it for a few weeks and put it away. After the patch and mod's it became my favorite game of all time.

Still, I like the PT and hope that people will not let this game die.

quote:

The game is losing interest and I look forward to SH5 as I will once again roam the Atlantic in search of the prize.

Well, look at it this way, you'll be in a submarine, traveling the ocean and sinking enemy ships. What are you doing now?

I think "RR" has said it well.
Will SH5 be a winner out of the box, or will everyone have to suffer until someone, someone who doesn't work for Ubi, takes in hand and does what the gamemakers should of done to start with?
Want me to spend $50.00 on a game? Make it worth my wild. Aggravation I can get almost anywhere for free.

SH 4 still has plenty to offer and as Robbins said, not really in it's prime yet.Just check out subsim....things such as Japanese campaign, officers quarters project, WW I mod etc are all part of the near future.AI torpedos.TMO 1.9 will be out eventually.Plenty to do.

Personally I doubt I will get into SH 5 much because it's u boats, i just don't find U boats as fascinating.I will purchase it to support he franchise though, hoping a successful SH 5 will bring an even better SH 6:Return to the Pacific(US fleetboats).

Just can't see how anyone could think SH 4 is at the end of the road, but to each his own.

All i can say is TMO will be up to version 2.0 before i quit modding, and even then, I have no intention of touching SH5 with a 12 ft pole. It's gonna take alot more then eyecandy to make me drop SH4 after all the work ive put into it. SH4 is nowhere near the end of the road, not by a long shot. There's still MUCH untapped potential.

Well I for one will continue to play SH4 for quite some time.
I very much appreciate all the work that Ducimus has put into the game and
I thank him very much for it all. I'm still using TMO and will for some time to come.

All the modders have put in a lot of time and effort RFB, RSRD SCAF FOTRS and all of Websters mods and many more,
have made this a very interesting game to play. With out these I would have given up on Sh4 and most likely
any other UBI game as well.

I don't have much interest in Uboats but if Sh5 is worth it I'll play it but only after it has proven itself.


Magic

If Ubi is watching this thread, and I fear they are not, there is a lesson here. The chief fans and the people who are responsible for the longevity of SH4 are not willing to let it go. The very people who resist turning SH4 into yet another discarded drink coaster are Ubi's most dedicated players, the people who generate the enthusiasm at the forums, the people who mod the games and enhance the value of Ubi's products.

Why would a game company go through all the effort to produce such loyalty and then flush it down the commode? Follow the money. The only way Ubi has to survive is to work against the interests of its customers. That shows that the business model is bad. If an income stream was paid to Ubi for the purpose of maintaining rather than destroying, Ubi would maintain a much better game than they can dispose of today and they would produce much more income in a much less clumpy fashion than they do now.

As it is now, they publish, the cash rolls in in a six month long glob and then they sit around with Silent Hunter voodoo dolls sticking pins in them chanting "Die! Die! Die! Why can't those marks EVER lose interest! Die!" while the only thing they get from a successful game publication after the initial rush to buy is continuing expenses. No wonder they work against us. They resent us for standing in the way of their next drink coaster.