I don't think I've ever posted here before, although I used to lurk, a long time ago.
I was an enthusiastic user of ShipSim in its first, and subsequent iterations. When SSE came out, I bought it without hesitating. And I was duly disappointed when it was unstable to the point of being nearly unusable. But I generally subscribed to the view in forums at that time that previous ShipSim releases had been buggy at first and had been improved over time, and - more importantly - let's tough it out because, damn it all, what other civilian maritime simulator do we have to play with? VSTEP deserve our support because they're providing an incredibly niche product, and if we don't support it, it'll be gone... and something is better than nothing, right?
Well, despite trying to remain pragmatic and optimistic, I drifted away from SSE. I didn't really go back to SS08, either. SS08 at that point was great, but at the back of one's mind, it was dead; no more development or content.
So why this post? Well, the other day I was messing around on a new PC, and suddenly thought I ought to re-download and re-install SSE. After all, it had been two years, all the bugs should have been ironed out by now, so why not?
And sure, 1.5 is many orders of magnitude more stable that the early few versions; it doesn't crash when loading a scene or previewing a vessel. It might be my imagination, but it seems to run a few fps better than it did in the early days , too.
And then I load Dover, or the Solent, and find that that the bouyage is lacking to the point of being meaningless. I drop anchor broadside to the wind, and the ship doesn't budge. The hovercraft behaves like a displacement vessel (including being unable to come ashore).
And then I remember why I drifted away from this sim - it wasn't really the endless crashes. It was the discovery, while looking for solutions on these forums, that SSE had been thoroughly "nerfed". It was several posts from, or on behalf of VSTEP, that said that while the game engine was perfectly capable of simulating current and wind, and completely able to represent comprehensive charting and bouyage, that it wasn't for the likes of those of us that had paid a mere 20 or 30 euros for the game. Lord, no! Such features had been carefully cauterised from the code to make sure that none of us could suddenly decide to set up seafaring academies on the cheap. In fact it was, we were assured, to protect people who'd spent EUR 4,000 on the professional version & set-up for their schools and training centers, so that they wouldn't feel bad that the rest of us could simulate basic vessel dynamics and navigation in the comfort of our own home. (God only knows what VSTEP must think of FS or X-Plane. You mean they include VORs and wind?!). Never mind the fact that the professional offering was based on the S08 engine, and requires significant hardware and a whole bunch of features above and beyond basic (but full) vessel dynamics to be in any way meaningful as a training aid.
All of this is preposterous. I seem to recall that some bouyage was included in an early patch, in response to the howls of outrage in the forums; but enabling stuff - basic, fundamental stuff - that the sim engine can apparently provide, but which is disabled for paranoid, misguided commercial reasons? Well, no dice.
I dig all this up now, as I said, because I fired up SSE on a new PC. And that prompted me to have a look at these forums again. And it's sad - there's barely anyone left but people with bugs or crashes, which stir a few soul-searching posts from the remaining stalwarts about what has happened to the SSE community. Like, for example, the depressing thread where someone reasonably asked what the modding policy might be, was shot down, and then was rounded on by officialdom for saying "thanks for the info, but goodbye".
This attitude is mistaken.
This is a niche market, it is true. But niche works both ways. Niche tends to mean enthusiasts, sometimes very serious about their enthusiasm. They know the details, the specifics - they're not hanging out in this niche casually. There aren't very many of them, but what they lack in numbers, they make up for in intensity (expressed in dollars spent on things that the average guy in the street wouldn't even have a clue about, for example). Dumb it down, treat them with contempt, and condescend - in short, assume that these participants in a highly niche market are somehow casual and don't really care that much, one way or the other ... do all that, and those numbers go from small to none, and the niche dies. I think that is exactly the mistake VSTEP have made. It may well be that their commercial products have met successes that mean they don't really care - but then one wonders why the frequent mentions of half a million purchases of ShipSim at the time of SSE's launch.
It would be nice if they reconsider. But I am not holding my breath.
