Why is this game still on the market place?

[Majorjim!]

5 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

You paid full price for KSP... it "works" when you discount the bugs you experience which may or may not be game breaking.

It's a finished product which is in development. You shouldn't expect the first version of any game to be flawless. Even AAA games with $100mil+ budgets have broken first releases. Why would something as small as KSP be different?

 

5 minutes ago, ChillingCammy said:

Buddy do you even console

 

3 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I do console. As well as mobile, and PC.

Bugs occur for every game on any platform.

The PC versions have, for me always been playable, no major issues. 

 The console version is currently unplayable. Folks payed full price for an unplayable game..

[ChillingCammy]

1 minute ago, Columbia said:

How do you plan to do that? Spamming redundant threads all over the forum complaining?

Keep commenting. Let's get the viability up on this problem.

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, ChillingCammy said:

If my presence on this forum helps other console players avoid the same mistake I'll be glad. 

Your likely not. For one, this is a forum accessed primarily by computer or mobile device, not console, and even then, people who are "considering buying it" aren't looking into a community they cannot participate in when they lack the center piece. Your better off going to PSN or the Xbox Marketplace itself and complaining, not here.

Even if they do look here, they aren't going to mind someone who's just screaming about the problems. They're going to look at normal feedback.

1 minute ago, Majorjim! said:

 

 

The PC versions have, for me always been playable, no major issues. 

 The console version is currently unplayable. Folks payed full price for an unplayable game..

That seems debatable. People seem to find the landing gear and rovers now unusable not to mention from what I hear increased crashes. That makes the game unplayable.

So that's unplayable for the PC and console. Again, why expect better from a new platform?

[ChillingCammy]

Google

2 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Your likely not. For one, this is a forum accessed primarily by computer or mobile device, not console, and even then, people who are "considering buying it" aren't looking into a community they cannot participate in when they lack the center piece. Your better off going to PSN or the Xbox Marketplace itself and complaining, not here.

Even if they do look here, they aren't going to mind someone who's just screaming about the problems. They're going to look at normal 

Citation please

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, ChillingCammy said:

Google

Citation please

Google isn't going to lead them here. It's going to lead them to the ksp website. Which is going to do the opposite of your desired effect.

Citation for what? People not wanting to look at people who complain? well I'm one. I am a citation.

[Red Iron Crown]

Please do not make the discussion personal, everyone. 

Edit: Some posts have been removed. If you feel something breaks the rules, please report it.

[Alshain]

@ChillingCammy I feel your pain, but historically this has been Squad's release model, those of us who play on the PC have been there, we are just a few steps ahead (and a few steps back with 1.1).  Despite this, the game still sells.  Those who have been here will recall I predicted the console launch would be problematic, but yet it pressed on and people still buy it.  It's a good game, and I have no doubt Squad and FT will fix the issues, but jumping the gun on releases has always been an issue with Squad.  I personally only have a Wii U, so don't even have the console version yet.  I suppose that is a good thing in a way, after seeing the problems, but somehow I doubt the Wii U release will be flawless either

[ChillingCammy]

13 minutes ago, Columbia said:

I would disappear like a fart in the wind if I got a refund. Or a console patch.

 

Not sure which is less likely

2 minutes ago, Alshain said:

@ChillingCammy I feel your pain, but historically this has been Squad's release model, those of us who play on the PC have been there, we are just a few steps ahead (and a few steps back with 1.1).  Despite this, the game still sells.  Those who have been here will recall I predicted the console launch would be problematic, but yet it pressed on and people still buy it.  It's a good game, and I have no doubt Squad and FT will fix the issues, but jumping the gun on releases has always been an issue with Squad.  I personally only have a Wii U, so don't even have the console version yet.  I suppose that is a good thing in a way, after seeing the problems, but somehow I doubt the Wii U release will be flawless either

Yeah I suppose I should have done my research.  I saw some YouTube videos and made a knee jerk decision. 

And how much I played and loved ksp... 

 

But then the great corruption came and where there was once love there is now cold cold resentment. 

 

 

[Alshain]

3 minutes ago, ChillingCammy said:

I would disappear like a fart in the wind if I got a refund. Or a console patch.

 

Not sure which is less likely

The patch is coming, please read here.

The good news is that despite their jumping to soon on the releases, historically Squad does fix the problems eventually.  That's more than I can say for some companies, I have games on my Steam list (prior to the refund policy) that have never worked at all.  Whether that comforts you any or not, I can not say, but as an experienced player I feel confident they will make it right in time.

[razark]

38 minutes ago, Columbia said:

Free speech does not equal to being able to throw insults and pitchforks at a company.

Yes, it very much does mean exactly that.

But then, you aren't thinking that free speech applies here, are you?

 

 

36 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

...it "works" when you discount the bugs you experience...

Umm.  That's completely meaningless.  User complains about the bugs.  You tell him that everything is fine, if you just ignore the bugs.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, razark said:

Umm.  That's completely meaningless.  User complains about the bugs.  You tell him that everything is fine, if you just ignore the bugs.

I'm pointing out that even the PC version has bugs, and is to some users in it's own right unplayable. So we're on par with consoles in that aspect.

[Alshain]

Free speech only applies to the government anyway.  Free speech means they can not fine or arrest you, it doesn't mean you can't be fired, shunned, or socially exiled.

[Majorjim!]

 I mean unplayable as in you cannot progress on console. If you play the game (career or sandbox) or make ships and the game crashes the save is corrupted and you lose everything! That had never happened to me once in over 2000 hours on PC.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Majorjim!

[ZooNamedGames]

2 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

No it's a fact man. I mean unplayable as in you cannot progress on console. If you play the game (career or sandbox) or make ships and the game crashes the save is corrupted and you lose everything! That had never happened to me once in over 2000 hours on PC.

Happened to me. So it does happen.

As to the saves, it wouldn't be the first game I know to do it. Nevertheless, it's the first version.

[Alshain]

5 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

 I mean unplayable as in you cannot progress on console. If you play the game (career or sandbox) or make ships and the game crashes the save is corrupted and you lose everything! That had never happened to me once in over 2000 hours on PC.

Happened to me at 1.1.  The save file didn't corrupt but I couldn't keep the game running long enough to progress anyway.

[KSK]

50 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

For one, I expect better bug reporting. Complaining isn't bug fixing. Another thing is that its equally your fault. You failed to do research on a game that on it's PRIMARY platform is already buggy, so you assumed it would work on a new platform. So you can stop acting like this is solely Squad's fault. If your going to throw your money at something without looking then it's your own fault.

Blaming the victim is rarely an acceptable response either, even if you feel the 'victim' has an exaggerated grievance.

And actually I can't agree with your post at all. Load/save functionality is basic stuff for almost any modern game. It should just work and I don't think anybody would expect it not to work regardless of what research they might have done. It actually baffles me how something so basic managed to slip through multiple layers of accreditation and supposed quality control.

For the record, I have no skin in this game since I don't own a console and have no intention of owning one. 

57 minutes ago, Columbia said:

These are the types of posts that make General Discussion look like such a toxic place.

1. This is their forum, not a YouTube comment section. Free speech does not equal to being able to throw insults and pitchforks at a company.

2. If you want Squad's developers to look at your complaints seriously, post a damn bug report instead of accusing Squad of rushing the game. ("Unfinished" and "rushed"? What do you think they'll get from that? Hmm?)

 

Again it's a matter of degree. This isn't an 'OMG, I can't believe Squad have painted the Round8 the wrong shade of gold - AND MY WORLD IS RUINED' thread. This is a legitimate (and actually reasonably civil) complaint about basic stuff (for any game, not just KSP) not working.

And frankly, I'm not entirely surprised when people grumble about the game being rushed any more. Release-early-then-patch has been the consistent pattern for the last several updates. There may well be very good business reasons why things need to be that way but it doesn't stop it from being true.

[Alshain]

13 minutes ago, KSK said:

And frankly, I'm not entirely surprised when people grumble about the game being rushed any more. Release-early-then-patch has been the consistent pattern for the last several updates. There may well be very good business reasons why things need to be that way but it doesn't stop it from being true.

It depends on what you call "good business reasons".  The reason for doing it is because the test team is lacking.  Not that the test team isn't doing their job, it's that they aren't enough.  Software development takes a lot of testing.  I used to operate by the guideline that whatever it takes to develop, it takes 3x that much to test.  So a week of development is nearly a month of testing, Not just time either, 5 programmers means 15 testers.  (This assumes there is no possibility of automated testing, in a game that would be very hard to do). Squad doesn't do this, they rely on their customers to do their testing.  Because they are an indie company, depending on the person that may or may not be an acceptable business practice.  However, that is how it is.

EDIT: And Squad isn't the only company that does it either.  You have to understand and accept that if you choose to buy an indie game.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Alshain

[ZooNamedGames]

7 minutes ago, KSK said:

Blaming the victim is rarely an acceptable response either, even if you feel the 'victim' has an exaggerated grievance.

And actually I can't agree with your post at all. Load/save functionality is basic stuff for almost any modern game. It should just work and I don't think anybody would expect it not to work regardless of what research they might have done. It actually baffles me how something so basic managed to slip through multiple layers of accreditation and supposed quality control.

For the record, I have no skin in this game since I don't own a console and have no intention of owning one. 

Again it's a matter of degree. This isn't an 'OMG, I can't believe Squad have painted the Round8 the wrong shade of gold - AND MY WORLD IS RUINED' thread. This is a legitimate (and actually reasonably civil) complaint about basic stuff (for any game, not just KSP) not working.

And frankly, I'm not entirely surprised when people grumble about the game being rushed any more. Release-early-then-patch has been the consistent pattern for the last several updates. There may well be very good business reasons why things need to be that way but it doesn't stop it from being true.

From what I've seen in the last few debate threads, there is no "acceptable response".

The console game "Alien Isolation" had a budget far exceeding Squad's and I also was left with a game breaking bug. One that literally made progression impossible. So this is a common problem with games, even console games. 

Referring back to my original comment, no initial release is perfect.

[Slam_Jones]

21 minutes ago, Alshain said:

It depends on what you call "good business reasons".  The reason for doing it is because the test team is lacking.  Not that the test team isn't doing their job, it's that they aren't enough.  Software development takes a lot of testing.  I used to operate by the guideline that whatever it takes to develop, it takes 3x that much to test.  So a week of development is nearly a month of testing, Not just time either, 5 programmers means 15 testers.  Squad doesn't do this, they rely on their customers to do their testing.  Because they are an indie company, depending on the person that may or may not be an acceptable business practice.  However, that is how it is.

Are their profit margins so very thin that they can't hire 10 extra QA people for a few extra weeks to smash some bugs?

I can't possibly claim to know the intimate details of their finances, but if they're doing well enough that they don't want people to know how well they're doing (as seems to be the case whenever such a subject is brought up), well, that indicates to me that they're doing pretty darn well.

This is what I'm looking at here: they posted this thread on the 7th of June, asking (in so many words) for QA testers for the console versions of the game.  Fair enough.  Then we see in this thread that the game was released on consoles on 15th July (for XBox) and (assuming my sources are correct) 12th July for PlayStation.  So, even if they had testers literally coming in and starting the day they posted the request for them (unlikely), they still would have had barely over a month to test the game.  I can only assume that it takes a few weeks to get people properly (temporarily) hired for the job, orientated, and then able to report bugs.  Not to mention the time it takes to correct those bugs, and then test that section again to make sure the correction stuck, and repeat the cycle until you've got a polished product.

So, by all means correct me if I'm wrong, but that means that at the absolute most, they had experienced KSP players giving their opinion on the console version for less than a month before they decided to ship it.  Obviously I'm not an expert in the industry, but to my untrained eye, that just does not look like enough time to smash all the bugs that could appear in such a complex game.  It's my opinion that Flying Tiger jumped the gun and rushed to ship a product that they were not done with.  But I am just one panda bear and I could be wrong.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Slam_Jones
Added links

[Alshain]

10 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

Are their profit margins so very thin that they can't hire 10 extra QA people for a few extra weeks to smash some bugs?

Nobody but Squad knows their profit margins.  There are many reasons to withhold that information that has nothing to do with how much they are making.  I hope they are doing well, but I can't say that they are.

14 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

This is what I'm looking at here: they posted this thread on the 7th of June, asking (in so many words) for QA testers for the console versions of the game.  Fair enough.  Then we see in this thread that the game was released on consoles on 15th July (for XBox) and (assuming my sources are correct) 12th July for PlayStation.  So, even if they had testers literally coming in and starting the day they posted the request for them (unlikely), they still would have had barely over a month to test the game.  I can only assume that it takes a few weeks to get people properly (temporarily) hired for the job, orientated, and then able to report bugs.  Not to mention the time it takes to correct those bugs, and then test that section again to make sure the correction stuck, and repeat the cycle until you've got a polished product.

So, by all means correct me if I'm wrong, but that means that at the absolute most, they had experienced KSP players giving their opinion on the console version for less than a month before they decided to ship it.  Obviously I'm not an expert in the industry, but to my untrained eye, that just does not look like enough time to smash all the bugs that could appear in such a complex game.  It's my opinion that Flying Tiger jumped the gun and rushed to ship a product that they were not done with.  But I am just one panda bear and I could be wrong.

I'm going to have to correct you there because you are wrong.  The desire to hire more QA is not an indicator that there are none already.

[Slam_Jones]

1 minute ago, Alshain said:

Nobody but Squad knows their profit margins.  There are many reasons to withhold that information that has nothing to do with how much they are making.  I hope they are doing well, but I can't say that they are.

Really?  It's almost like I acknowledged that in the sentence literally right after the one you quoted...  Selective reading, eh?

I can't possibly claim to know the intimate details of their finances, but if they're doing well enough that they don't want people to know how well they're doing (as seems to be the case whenever such a subject is brought up), well, that indicates to me that they're doing pretty darn well.

The point is, they failed to QA the product properly.  If they had, would we be seeing so many people making such a big fuss about it?

[Alshain]

1 minute ago, Slam_Jones said:

Really?  It's almost like I acknowledged that in the sentence literally right after the one you quoted...  Selective reading, eh?

You didn't.  In the sentence that followed that you made an assumption that not disclosing their financial state indicates a good financial state.  I said that was a fallacy, because it is.  Keeping your financial state private is a common practice whether it is good or bad.  There is simply no way to know.

3 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

The point is, they failed to QA the product properly.  If they had, would we be seeing so many people making such a big fuss about it?

I'm not arguing that point, only your timeline of events.

[KSK]

43 minutes ago, Alshain said:

It depends on what you call "good business reasons".  The reason for doing it is because the test team is lacking.  Not that the test team isn't doing their job, it's that they aren't enough.  Software development takes a lot of testing.  I used to operate by the guideline that whatever it takes to develop, it takes 3x that much to test.  So a week of development is nearly a month of testing, Not just time either, 5 programmers means 15 testers.  (This assumes there is no possibility of automated testing, in a game that would be very hard to do). Squad doesn't do this, they rely on their customers to do their testing.  Because they are an indie company, depending on the person that may or may not be an acceptable business practice.  However, that is how it is.

EDIT: And Squad isn't the only company that does it either.  You have to understand and accept that if you choose to buy an indie game.

Well the good business reasons I had in mind were along the lines of 'we do it this way because otherwise we go broke'. I'm aware (or can imagine) all the points you raise and am very much aware that all that testing takes time and money. But we've also seen that Squad are in this for the long haul and that they do, in time, fix the bugs, change things in response to feedback etc. So they're obviously finding the resources from somewhere.

But the consistently overoptimistic deadlines do get tiring. It suggests that some part of the pipeline isn't working and that somebody somewhere has a consistently wrong understanding of how much can be done in a given amount of time. It also suggests that lessons either are not being, or cannot be,  learned, which is depressing whichever way you look at it.

Let me also be quite clear - I'm also well aware that none of the above may be Squad's fault at all. They undoubtedly have external pressures and deadlines they have to meet. In which case I feel for them - they can't talk about all that internal stuff and yet they end up carrying the can when things go wrong.

[Snark]

25 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

that indicates to me that they're doing pretty darn well

^ This.  Disclaimer notwithstanding, this is making an inference about their finances.  Which we simply don't know.  Sure, it's possible to speculate, but "don't know" means "don't know".

4 minutes ago, Slam_Jones said:

The point is, they failed to QA the product properly.  If they had, would we be seeing so many people making such a big fuss about it?

Again, "don't know" means "don't know".

I don't work for Squad, so I don't have any more visibility into their internal processes than you do.  I do, however, know something about their kind of situation, since I've been a professional software engineer at companies large and small for more than twenty years, so I do have some idea about what's involved in getting software out the door.  I can also say this:  if you've never been in the commercial software business yourself, please be careful about making assertions about an area which (and I mean this in the friendliest way) you know nothing about.

Clearly, the problems with the console release represent some kind of a miss.  As a player, you're perfectly within your rights (and your area of expertise, i.e. "playing the game") to say that.  The console release is out, a lot of players are justifiably very unhappy with the problems, I don't think anybody's questioning that.  And if your position is simply "I paid money for a product, and it didn't live up to a reasonable expectation of what it should do, so therefore I'm unhappy with the company that released the product," that is of course your prerogative.

However, once you leave that simple, basic starting point, and start to speculate about why that happened, or what the motivations were behind it, or how culpable various parties are, or what happened, or who exactly caused the problem, etc.... well, then you're getting into areas that (not to put too fine a point on it) you really have no idea what you're talking about, and speculation doesn't help.

Again, I don't know Squad specifically, but I do know software developers, and software companies, and the software production and release process.  And so I'm in a position to tell you a few things:

• Nobody wants to ship a product with severe problems, ever.  Software developers are just like carpenters or bakers or landscapers or artists or musicians or anyone else who makes things for a living:  they take pride in their work, they're emotionally invested in wanting to make something great, and they put a lot of hard work into doing so.  If, as a player, you're unhappy, when all you did was fork over $40 and a few hours of your time... imagine just how unhappy the person is who made that thing, who poured their heart and soul into making it over a period of months or years?  Software developers are people too.  It's okay to be unhappy... just realize you're not the only one.
• Making software is hard.  Doing platform ports is really hard.  Doing platform ports on a relative shoestring as a tiny company... not sure what the right adverb is, here, but, well, it's a lot harder than that.  Tossing a product over the fence and having an external vendor do the port for you can be a viable strategy sometimes, and depending on circumstances might be the only option... but it's always a gamble at best.
• Unfortunate things sometimes happen, even if you're competent and diligent and trying your best.  I haven't played the console version myself (don't own a console), but from hearing the descriptions here, I gather it's something that folks run into pretty darn quick.  So I can totally understand that from a player's perspective, it may seem completely inconceivable:  "How on earth could you not catch something so glaringly obvious before shipping?  You must not have tried at all!"  Well... there's always a reason.  For everything.  Things happen that in retrospect seem bone-headedly obvious, which weren't so obvious at the time.  During my observations of Squad and KSP over the last couple of years, I haven't seen anything that indicates to me that anybody there is either stupid or evil.  There are a lot of ways something could go wrong that results in what just happened.  If you have no insight into what actually happened (and you can't, if you don't work at Squad), then it's pointless to speculate about the reasons why.

Sure, if a company just completely blows off QA, they're going to ship something with problems.  It's also possible to work hard at QA and end up shipping something with problems anyway, due to a lengthy slew of other potential problems that can crop up, some of which are potentially preventable, many of which are not.  You can choose to believe me or not about that; I'm just giving my two cents, speaking as someone who's been doing this for a living for a couple of decades.

In other words:  It's pretty safe to say that Squad didn't want this to happen.  It's also safe to say that they didn't do it on purpose.  If you want to complain about how unhappy you are, by all means do so... but (and this is a comment I'm directing to the community at large, not necessarily you in particular, Jones) perhaps stop to reflect a moment, before heaping abuse on hard-working, passionate people who are trying really hard to produce something great?  And, for the most part, succeeding at it?

Please... criticize the product.  Not the people.

(And be aware that you really are criticizing people, not just a faceless company, when you lay into Squad.  It's a tiny company, not a giant corporation of tens of thousands of employees.  There are real people on the other side of that screen.  I'm not telling you what to say or not to say, just asking that you consider that when you say it.)

[ChillingCammy]

The fact that Nestor explicitly said they didn't find these bugs in THREE rounds of QA is a hard pill to swallow.