Ghost Recon Announcement

[Sup]

But it's no small wonder the developers don't pay this community much heed when they continue to spout nonsense about ubisoft going downhill financially and being some kind of an evil emire -- i'd say they're pretty proud of the games they worked on.

Just to correct that misnomer, the developers do indeed pay this community heed, they have a history of it, and continue to do so.

Trying to link an individuals personal opinion regarding a publishers financial viability to the attention a developer is likely to take of a communitys feedback on game mechanics is absurd.

It's more of a general attitude and less of an individual person, but i stand corrected -- i guess i was basing my assumption on the general attitude around here that Ubi and RSE are 'abandoning their old fans'.

[ApexMods]

But perceiving GRAW as bad games and blindly criticizing ubisoft and attacking the Devs is much of what goes on around here, and what i was responding to.

Show me who blindly criticized Ubisoft or attacked the developers in this thread! No Sup, I think it is you, who is (again) blindly fishing for controversy. I have tried to calmly explain the situation with rational arguments, and you repeatedly resort to derogatory statements. You should know better, and it suits you and your opinions a lot more when you put on your less offensive thinking cap. It is one thing to voice a personal opinion by providing constructive criticism, but it is another thing to just blindly attack other people for theirs, all the time.

But it's no small wonder the developers don't pay this community much heed when they continue to spout nonsense about ubisoft going downhill financially and being some kind of an evil emire -- i'd say they're pretty proud of the games they worked on.

Do you seriously think this kind of remark has ANY constructive aspects? Again, you try to demean this community in a derogatory way, offend its members by calling their posts "nonsense", and then go ahead and throw in some generalities no one questions in the first place. Why do you so desperately want to pick a fight?

Once more I have to ask you - how would you know if the Ghost Recon developers did not pay much heed to the largest Ghost Recon fan community in the world? Do you have some fact-based inside information you want to share? I suggest you tread lightly, because with statements like that you not only harm yourself but also attack those developers you proclaim to defend.

Please try to find back to posting your opinions in a more constructive way, Sup. I assure you - that will receive a lot more positive attention than just being perceived as offensive so often. These forums are frequented by an excellent crowd of people and we all owe this website and each other some well-deserved civilized respect.

[Sup]

But perceiving GRAW as bad games and blindly criticizing ubisoft and attacking the Devs is much of what goes on around here, and what i was responding to.

Show me who blindly criticized Ubisoft or attacked the developers in this thread!

how long [the development team] have been involved in the series and what was their first experience with the game.

i shudder to think.....

"my first experience of Ghost Recon was GRAW..."

[ApexMods]

Sup, if you call that blind criticism and attacking then I really wonder how you interpret your own posts!

Additionally, I have to ask myself why I apparently wasted my entire post to explain the underlying desperation to you, seeing that this is all you have to offer as your answer. Admittedly, it disappoints and saddens me, but maybe this is just what you were aiming for, in which case I offer you my congratulations - objective complete.

[Sup]

Sup, if you call that blind criticism and attacking then I really wonder how you interpret your own posts!

Additionally, I have to ask myself why I apparently wasted my entire post to explain the underlying desperation to you, seeing that this is all you have to offer as your answer. Admittedly, it disappoints and saddens me, but maybe this is just what you were aiming for, in which case I offer you my congratulations - objective complete.

I wasn't really looking to make a big deal out of any of this. I'm not attacking the entire community, or anyone in it -- i'm just pointing out the silliness of lightspeed 'shuddering to think' of a person's first experience being to work on an award winning top selling title.

[ApexMods]

I wasn't really looking to make a big deal out of any of this. I'm not attacking the entire community, or anyone in it -- i'm just pointing out the silliness of lightspeed 'shuddering to think' of a person's first experience being to work on an award winning top selling title.

I shudder to think... of your next post. Could be just my silliness, though.

Enough off-topic banter for now?

[WhiteKnight77]

OK, everyone needs to knock it off. Everyone back to their corners lest this thread gets locked.

[Lightspeed]

QUOTE(Lightspeed @ Feb 2 2009, 07:13 AM)

QUOTE

how long [the development team] have been involved in the series and what was their first experience with the game.

i shudder to think.....

"my first experience of Ghost Recon was GRAW..."

for the record, this was not a dig at what Devs have or haven't achieved - purely a fear that after this many years since GR was released, I wonder how many of the original Devs still remain with RSE and truly understand the GR experience.

GRAW and GRAW2 were successful in their own right - they weren't GR.

I fear that an RSE Dev might see them as one and the same - they're not and never will be.

[NoQuarter]

This disturbs me:

However, as some of our games did not meet the required quality levels to achieve their full potential they need more sales promotions than anticipated.

So instead of trying to increase QUALITY they just throw more money into marketing and/or dropping the price.....

Business as usual, Yves has to deal with the (company) bottom line, and account for all expenditures.

However he neglected to mention that they can (and do) unceremoniously drop support for some of those low quality titles- in order to cut costs.

Here's an idea of what Yves was getting at with that statement.

For North Americans only (so far) -DTD

[WhiteKnight77]

That promotion is only for the weekend. It also appears that Ubi does not know that mission packs are not full games and cannot be played by themselves as they are advertising the special as 5 games according to the banner on the Ubi forums for GR.

[kleaneasy]

That promotion is only for the weekend. It also appears that Ubi does not know that mission packs are not full games and cannot be played by themselves as they are advertising the special as 5 games according to the banner on the Ubi forums for GR.

while during prime PC gaming days, expansion packs needed the original game in order to run it, both you and i well know that IT and DS were robust enough to be considered full titles, no?

[Rocky]

Nit picking about the advert aside, that's a superb buy for under $20. I'd buy one of them just to keep safe!

[NoQuarter]

^

When I first noticed it my first thought was that it was an excellent deal and the perfect time to back up the collection, until follow up showed that it was digital...I prefer hard copy.

[Rocky]

^

When I first noticed it my first thought was that it was an excellent deal and the perfect time to back up the collection, until follow up showed that it was digital...I prefer hard copy.

x2. A boxed complete GR/GRAW/GRAW2 would be awesome.

[WhiteKnight77]

That promotion is only for the weekend. It also appears that Ubi does not know that mission packs are not full games and cannot be played by themselves as they are advertising the special as 5 games according to the banner on the Ubi forums for GR.

while during prime PC gaming days, expansion packs needed the original game in order to run it, both you and i well know that IT and DS were robust enough to be considered full titles, no?

Eight missions to me is not a full game (the number of missions in both DS and IT). If a mission pack is robust to be considered full game, why were DS missions added to IT on the XBox?

Still, all 3 games plus mission packs for $20 is a great deal.

[Cpl Ledanek]

With this economy, I'm glad for the guys/gals at RSE for having a job.

Just wake me up when its done

[RatoN]

THAT made me spew my coffee Ledanek

This economy will stop a lot of the corporate silliness. We might see better products as a result.

[NèMó]

I Will Be Happy If They Use Same Engine On All PlatForms I Loved The 360 Version Better Then The PC Version. And Then Have Remakes Of All The Old Multi-Player Maps From GR"C" To GRAW2, Now That Would Be Cool.

[WhiteKnight77]

We know recently that Ubi posted it's quarterly profits report with the CEO relating that their company had poor sales on some games and that they were going to do some promotions to help said sales. Well, we know that the whole GR franchise was on sale and recently, GRAW was being given away for free with the purchase of EndWar.

A forumer at Ubi, Xoops made the following obeservations:

Just for your information...

Here is the kind of sales promotion the CEO was talking about in the last sales report: Tom Clancys EndWar with Free Game.

If you buy a copy of the PC version of End War for the full price (50$), then you get a free copy of the PC version of GRAW.

Interesting...

Let's make an evaluation of that sale promotion. More precisely, let's evaluate if there is any sort of compromise from Ubisoft into this deal.

First of all, we all know that Ubisoft acknowledges that some of its games failed to meet the required quality to get on the shelves. Now, we all know that End War belongs to these games, the CEO having explicitly mentioned that End War failed to spawn a new franchise because of quality issues.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but End War was supposed to be console-only, right? But now, SURPRISE, there is a PC version!

What does that tell me?

Well, that tells me that the bugs and glitches contained in one Ubisoft game are so manifold and grievously obvious that for the first time in the history of this company, it hurts sales of the game.

Now, to compensate from the losses, Ubisoft has decided to invest a tiny amount of money to do a straight port of the bunch of bugs to the PC platform in order to try to milk the PC market with the defective product.

Ubisoft acknowledging publicly that the game is subpar, some kind of ''sale promotion'' must be offered. Will Ubisoft put the game into the bargain bin for 9.99$ ? Nope! Ubisoft will do much better than that... Ubisoft will rather offer a free copy of another defective (but not totally broken) product that is three (3) years old and that does not sell anymore.

To sum up the story, not only Ubisoft is trying to compensate losses by selling a broken product to a new market for which the product was not originally intended, but Ubisoft is selling the broken product full price while trying to disguise the full price sale as a promotion. How does Ubisoft pretend that the deal is a promotion? By giving a free copy of another product that is three years old, that fails to sell anymore even in the bargain bins, and that itself failed to meet the ''required quality levels'' in its own time (in 2006).

In conclusion, even though Ubisoft acknowledged to release subpar quality products, did Ubisoft fulfilled its promise of doing proper ''sales promotions''? Nope! Did Ubisoft make any sort of compromise? Nope!

Ubisoft is just doing business as usual. The only difference is that never before, a corporation had so much ROFLs right in the collective face of its customers.

The most amazing thing is that Ubisoft will once again get away with this. As a said, business as usual...

I wonder what other promotions Ubi will have to help move titles that didn't sell as well as Ubi expected.

[BS PALADIN]

The way i see it the quality of Ghost Recon 4 will depend on who wins out between RSE and UBI. I truly believe that the RSE developers have our best wishes at heart. They want to make a great game that we will all love. That is obvious. Ubi on the other hand are soley interested in making money. They lost the love of making great games long ago. Now it is about the finances.

Will RSE convince Ubi to let them make the game they want to make, will they give them enough resources to accomplish that goal. Who knows but as its looking that Ghost Recon 4 will have a minimum development time of 2 1/2 years we should get at least a polished product.

Whether we all enjoy it as the true sequel to the [Ghost Recon], well we'll just have to wait and see. After the first few nuggets of info we'll have a better idea of what direction GR4 has taken.

[PONDLIFE]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that RSE.. or atleast the people that worked on GR have all long gone so why would they be putting pressure on UBI to release a game that makes us happy and fulfills our hopes and expectations of the original??

I'm sure the developers working on [OFP: DR] aren't putting any pressure on Codemasters to deliver a true sequel to Flashpoint any more than the bods working at RSE. In this current climate I'm sure their just grateful for any work they can get, basically the passion and vision of the originals isn't there!!

Now Blackfoot Studios, well maybe thats where the hope lays for us as with Bohemia releasing ArmaII for Flashpoint fans.

I'm not trying to be negative, But to pin hopes on RSE saving and bringing back the Ghost Recon name to what we know and love I think is being very optimistic.

Regards.

P.s. I'm not implying that either games won't be successful....just different!

Edited February 26, 2009 by PONDLIFE

[NoQuarter]

I wonder what other promotions Ubi will have to help move titles that didn't sell as well as Ubi expected.

Considering all the problems reported with the DTD GR series promo of a few weeks ago, they still apparently have their hands full trying to pull their heads out.

Kleaneasy is fond of saying that change is coming and that that change takes time, but in order for things to start changing Ubi must actually have to start changing things...and so far there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever.

Incomplete titles -lacking core gameplay elements, poor support, inaccurate/misleading PR...yep, business as usual for Ubisoft.

[BS PALADIN]

The current changes are recent. Say the last year. I dont think you will see those changes producing results until the end of this year at least. Ubisoft realise they have a significant problem, question is do they know the solution. The jury is out on that one.

For the record Im not defending Ubisoft. I think they are solely responsible for the decline in quality of their tactical range of games. Not just in design choices but also in support and community communication.

Why do you ask why I have faith in RSE. Well I believe I know the reasons why [GR] was such a great game ( big headed of me I know ) and I also believe that the top guys at RSE know those reasons as well. I think certain elements are falling into place that gives us a better chance since GRIT of getting a true sequel to [GR]. You may call me crazy and state numerous reasons why you think GR4 hasn't got a hope of hell of matching [GR] and those reasons will be valid, many of which I agree with. But I still think something has changed within Ubi, something that will give more freedom to the developers. And when the developers of GR4 are people whom I believe GET GR then I will remain very hopeful about the future of Ghost Recon.

[PONDLIFE]

I like many hope you're right BS PALADIN, but while UBI still dangle the noney purse above RSE's head I cannot belive that they will be given the freedom to deliver what many of us want to see i.e GR updated, but core gameplay untouched.

I commended GRiNs attempt by moving GRAW2 closer to the original and improving on GRAW and even applaud UBI for not giving us a straight console port, Which could have been an easier money maker and a damn sight cheaper to produce product. However we witnesses Bo and crews enthusiasm for this title on these boards, but what good did it do?

Look around at PC titles recently released and upcoming, The fashion seems to include the words MAINSTREAM and CASUAL gamer for any new title to be released!! It seems any game that is deemed a challange for people to grasp is too brave a step for major publishers, perhaps they too have lost faith and confidence in their own products.

[ZJJ]

The way i see it the quality of Ghost Recon 4 will depend on who wins out between RSE and UBI. I truly believe that the RSE developers have our best wishes at heart. They want to make a great game that we will all love. That is obvious. Ubi on the other hand are soley interested in making money. They lost the love of making great games long ago. Now it is about the finances.

Uib will "win." I know that the GRAW games made by GRIN ended up differently than they wanted them to be due to pressure from Ubi.