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Small Dev team are going all in on another title(Sherman Commander iirc) so all their resources are focused on that as apparently it will make/break the company
They are a very small team and have stated that once they have completed Sherman Commander they will return to iron out Destroyer a bit more.
Although small they are dedicated and I don’t see Ubisoft ever making Silent Hunter 6 or Destroyer Command 2 do you?
They cannot predict the future. By the time they finish SC (which is not going to be like in months), people who worked on DUBH might well have moved on or whatever, i.e. the knowledge of the code base etc. might be gone by then. Who knows, if SC is not a success, the team might be gone - the industry is volatile, and customer cashpool limited.
There are other small teams that do new games and still support the existing ones - because they know that it builds a loyal fan base, who are then more likely to buy their new game. Say KillerFishGames did it with Cold Waters as well as War on the Sea.
Even bug fixes (and there's more than one) that would come out once a quarter or so would be nice. But the attitude "forget about anything for the next two years, then maybe we'll get to it".
A prime example of a small studio that focused on the post-sales support, build massive fanbase and grew with that is Paradox. Of course, strategy games as somewhat different from a destroyer simulation, but I could see DLCs even here - say Artic route convoy protection (so both AAA, U-boat and even some surface action). Or if not DLC, then support for mods (which is what often keeps the games alive for a long time).
Agree with most of your points, the above one not so much though as Cold Waters isn't receiving updates anymore & Paul doesn't have much time for War on the Sea the moment, the Android versions of Pacific and Atlantic Fleet are also gone bye bye from Google Play.
Devs in the naval game space are generally very committed to the subject matter nobody make a game in a niche of a niche to make tons of money. They generally do it because it is their passion and want to create the game that they themselves would love to play, but they still have to eat keep the lights on and feed the family etc so if the money dries up through lack of sales etc, they gotta go do something else.
Iron Wolf are a very small team and consequently when they built Destroyer they built it with quite a narrow (cost effective) focus but I think their intention wad that if it was successful that it would act as a basepoint for a much expanded Pacific based sequel with AA Anti-surface , radar picket, transport escort etc. In that context the choice of a Fletcher DD makes perfect sense (it was kind of an oddity to have one in the Atlantic hunting UBoats, it did happen in real life but was incredibly rare)
Not sure how the game's sales went, they have I think over reached themselves with quite a few games on their portfolio planned eg Robin in da Hood, American Commando, the cancelled FMV game etc but these didn't pan out. I think they need to double down on what they are good at hopefully make Sherman Commander a big success and find and sign with a supportive publisher who specialises in mil sim games I would say they should talk to Microprose on that.
It would be a real shame if the company folds as you can see from Destroyer's development and even more so in the development of the UBoat board game that they are really connected with the genre / subject material.
It's important to remember that Destroyer was their first game and they will have learned a lot of lessons from it, I hope we get to sail the Pacific seas with them at some point in the future.
Thanks for your very reasoned and excellent reply! it's so uncommon these days.
I believe we're mostly along the same lines. I know Cold Waters is water under the bridge now, but I believe it's getting a good replacement with Sea Power (which I believe has staff connection with ColdWaters, but don't know the details so won't speculate) - and TBH, with something like that, ti's best to leave it to the modding community rather than spend resources.
War on the Sea still got an update last year (although I suspect that the EIC mod team had something to do with it.. ), and the modding community is still going strong. But modding needs support, and I'm not sure how much you can currently nod DUBH. That with the annoying bugs/UX decisions (although, to be fair, it's a rare small team that gets the UX right) is not doing the game any favours IMO.
I suspect that your point about overreach is spot on, and unfortunately something very common. It's really sad, as when you look at it historically, the small teams that succeeded, did so because they built a loyal fan base. You don't get a loyal fan base by abandoning a game "because we're working on a new and better". You get a loyal fan base because you show you care, and that means you address fans concerns. Currently, probably the best way to do this is to run an EAP - and even run if for quite some time (hey, Terra Invicta has been in EAP for what, three years now? And has massive base, and is nowhere near being finished).
I wish the DUBH developers well, but there's too many companies already fighting for my gaming time/money so that when I spend it, I want to know the game's going to be supported (by the devs or mods) for quite a while. Say for a new game, the already mentioned SeaPower is clearly far from finished, but already has mods, and a good community, which I'm sure will grow as you can see from the updates the dev listens to it.
I still play SH4, a game what, 20 years old? Because it has a great modding community, even though of course Ubisoft does exactly zero support for the game.
If DUBH dev change their approach, then I can revisit. TBH, I love DUBH concept, the way how they tried to put it together as a story and all that, but that's what makes me even more upset about the "no support for foreseeable future".
Get the game when it goes on sale...
It does an ok job of doing WW2 destroyer operations and depth charging and working with other ships and planes. Not a lot of other games out there like it. It has a campaign but it's basically just missions one after another with cutscenes in between. It's not a campaign system like U-Boat.
Where was this mentioned?