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KSP Weekly: We’re turning into polyglots!


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15 hours ago, EBOSHI said:

The more obvious places to put all that effort now to keep the game alive and the cash rolling in for ongoing development are DLCs, KSP 2.0 and localisation.

Potentially a tangent question, is there a roadmap or discussion thread from Squad about what is actually up next for dev as far as plans for specific DLC, features, etc.?

I know there's a Suggestions & Dev Discussion thread, but is that the "official" info from the dev team?

Not trying to redirect the thread off-topic. Links to other threads would be welcomed. :P

(Also apologies for ignorance, new to the game and the forum. But loving this community!)

Edited by scottadges
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19 minutes ago, scottadges said:

Potentially a tangent question, is there a roadmap or discussion thread from Squad about what is actually up next for dev as far as plans for specific DLC, features, etc.?

There is not. Many suspect there isn't even a private roadmap and at this stage of the game('s development) I expect they're right. I bet they have ideas for 1.4 and beyond but nothing concrete and definitely nothing organized so much as to say with any assurance it'll be in the game at all, little alone actually in a specific future build.

Squad has never ever even suggested Paid DLC to my knowledge. They've mentioned "DLC" before but I strongly believe they meant things like the Asteroid Day and Soccer Ball mods, both of which were totally free.

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16 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

"Long tail" is the term you're looking for. I think localization will start another, smaller bell curve, which I guess is the reasoning behind putting development effort into it. Honestly I think Chinese is the big untapped market for localization, huge pool of native speakers and a smaller percentage of those speak English well enough to use the that version. We'll see, I suppose.

In other games I would say that is true, but there isn't really that much to 'read' in this game, so I don't think it will have as big an impact as a game with an extensive narrative.

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3 hours ago, scottadges said:

Potentially a tangent question, is there a roadmap or discussion thread from Squad about what is actually up next for dev as far as plans for specific DLC, features, etc.?

I know there's a Suggestions & Dev Discussion thread, but is that the "official" info from the dev team?

Not trying to redirect the thread off-topic. Links to other threads would be welcomed. :P

(Also apologies for ignorance, new to the game and the forum. But loving this community!)

Please read the post I referred to. It is a passage of a simple conversation. It is only communicating impressions.

Once you have read the conversation, you should immediately notice that no redirects or links are necessary.

That's all.

Edited by EBOSHI
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On 05/02/2017 at 11:09 AM, 5thHorseman said:

Thank you for proving that Squad can't win.

Don't mention it, people assume you're not working on it.
Mention it without details, people complain that you're teasing.
Mention it with details, and any one of those details change, people complain that you're not delivering on promises.
Mention it with details, and actually meet all of those details, people will have blown their expectations out of proportion and then complain that you didn't meet their unrealistic expectations.

So it seems the solution is

Don`t mention it unless you are working on it and already have the features nailed down. Just mention the existence of the feature at that stage, not the details

Don`t mention details until you have all the features nearly finished so the details are extremely unlikely to change.

Make sure the details are accurate and not hyped up so that overblown expectations will be seen as only that because the scope of the feature is well defined.

Always report a stage behind where you are instead of half a stage in front, it really improves how deliverable what you are reporting is and the accuracy of what you are reporting. It won`t change the release date but it will improve how you are perceived.

TL;DR Don`t tease, release devnotes.

 

EDIT :

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Many suspect there isn't even a private roadmap and at this stage of the game('s development) I expect they're right.


This is my suspicion.

(not singling you out 5th, you are just making some of the best posts to reply to :wink: )

Edited by John FX
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On 5.2.2017 at 2:06 AM, tack50 said:

Not an Xbox player for KSP especifically, but the way it normally works is that the language of your console is the one the game will be displayed in (if unavailable, it defaults to English). In theory it should automatically appear in your language automatically (assuming it will get a localization; many times developers just stick with what is sometimes called PAL-5: Spanish, German, French, English and Italian, though this is increasingly rare)

The closest thing to language region locking is that when games have a dub in Spanish, there might be 2 different dubs, one for Latin America and one for Spain. You only get the one for your region. In fact, if there's only one available, and it's for the other region, it's very likely the publisher just sticks to subtitles for your region instead of a full dub anyways! (Latin American dubs are usually badly received in Spain and vice versa)

That's actually a lot more relevant for movies and TV shows, but it can happen with games.

Since KSP does not have voice acting though, this should not be an issue

Actually, there are less native English speakers than Spanish ones. And that's just Spanish, add French, German, Italian, Portuguese, etc as well and you end up with a lot more than English. As for fluency, I think you are overestimating the amount of non native speakers that are willing to play a game in English (I am one actually, but I'm the exception, not the norm), here's a map for Europe: 

conversation-english-eurobarometer.jpg

For what is known as PAL-5 (the usual 5 translations: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian), it ranges from Germany's 56% to Spain's 22%. And that's a conversation and self-reported, the actual numbers might be even lower. Also it's Europe; other places probably have lower numbers as well.

You made me feel like an ostrich... and helped me pull my head out of the whole that I've been hiding in.

That map made it somewhat clear how few people that actualy are comfortable reading english. Add KSP and "rocket-science language" and words and it must be awful.

 

Great job, team!

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13 hours ago, scottadges said:

Potentially a tangent question, is there a roadmap or discussion thread from Squad about what is actually up next for dev as far as plans for specific DLC, features, etc.?

:D :D :D :D :D

Squad with a public roadmap.

That's a good one.

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On 2/5/2017 at 3:09 AM, 5thHorseman said:

Thank you for proving that Squad can't win.

Don't mention it, people assume you're not working on it.
Mention it without details, people complain that you're teasing.
Mention it with details, and any one of those details change, people complain that you're not delivering on promises.
Mention it with details, and actually meet all of those details, people will have blown their expectations out of proportion and then complain that you didn't meet their unrealistic expectations.

Plenty of independent game devs have public roadmaps and regularly give details on development without alienating their community. But that would require actually having a development structure, and I think Squad is still rebuilding that (and best of luck to them there). But still, this is hardly a no-win situation. You're defining "one person complains" as "our communication failed" which is... weird. 

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7 hours ago, scottadges said:

Sorry, I didn't see a link or maybe I missed it? If you could re-link or clarify I'd love to read that.

Because you quoted my remarks first, I thought that something related to our conversation. But it looks different. If it is unrelated to our conversation, you don't need to quote it.

If I have a weekly progress report, it will be enough for the conversation.
Even if there are official roadmap threads, there are welcome, appreciation, complaints and demands gaining in there. The situation will not change much now. I am not pessimistic and I am not optimistic either now.

Edited by EBOSHI
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20 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Welcome to the community!  Take no offense.  That's just Regex rolling his eyes at the idea of a Squad roadmap.

Not rolling my eyes, I'd love it if Squad "indied up" and did a proper roadmap like most of my other favorite indie companies, I'm just laughing because it'll never happen.

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9 hours ago, regex said:

Not rolling my eyes, I'd love it if Squad "indied up" and did a proper roadmap like most of my other favorite indie companies, I'm just laughing because it'll never happen.

I don`t think it ever will either and yet it would remove all the issues with passing on information to players. You would know what would be happening and a rough idea when. You could move difficult items back in the roadmap if needed and then let people know that, and it would easily explain why a feature was not being released this cycle, it`s because it`s been moved two cycles back. Want to know if a feature is still planned? Look at the roadmap and you`ll see it there in around three cycles. Concerned that a feature is not mentioned for a while? Oh, it`s all OK, look there it is still on the roadmap.

Of course if you are just winging it and putting in what you can and trying out things and seeing if your coding is up to the task and having minimal planning but trying to get in what you can and STOP HASSLING ME ABOUT EDGES! RIGHT WE`RE NOT TELLING YOU ANYTHING!

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21 hours ago, regex said:

Not rolling my eyes, I'd love it if Squad "indied up" and did a proper roadmap like most of my other favorite indie companies, I'm just laughing because it'll never happen.

i was about to say somethign but well ; ) grab a beer and chears ^^ )) ))) )))))) ,''') <= naruto 

a HUGE HUGE HUGE etc. a lot and well + alot lot lot + a lot lot lot lot grats to all localization(s) contributors ; ) welcome to earth ^^

Edited by WinkAllKerb''
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23 hours ago, regex said:

Not rolling my eyes, I'd love it if Squad "indied up" and did a proper roadmap like most of my other favorite indie companies, I'm just laughing because it'll never happen.

Thanks folks, no offense taken :D

To the point about benefits of a roadmap and communicating with players about the state of the game, Massive/Ubisoft have actually done a pretty interesting job the past 6 months with The Division.

Without getting into everything here (you can see content on this from several YouTubers) they basically put out pretty decent information in response to many players citing problems with the game.

Through patches, weekly live streams, and a lot of community outreach, they have been very publicly improving the game while also demonstrating real progress based suggestions.

Certainly, there's a budget difference between a AAA title and KSP for that kind of communication, but there's definitely lessons to be learned from thier efforts.

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13 minutes ago, scottadges said:

To the point about benefits of a roadmap and communicating with players about the state of the game, Massive/Ubisoft have actually done a pretty interesting job the past 6 months with The Division.

Without getting into everything here (you can see content on this from several YouTubers) they basically put out pretty decent information in response to many players citing problems with the game.

Through patches, weekly live streams, and a lot of community outreach, they have been very publicly improving the game while also demonstrating real progress based suggestions.

Certainly, there's a budget difference between a AAA title and KSP for that kind of communication, but there's definitely lessons to be learned from thier efforts.

To be fair Squad has been much better about communicating since the Max days. The specific issue of a roadmap though, is a sore point for some players. At this point a roadmap would probably include three features and localization, but it was very much needed in the alpha/beta stage and that's when the most noise was made about it, and why I continue to maintain that Squad never really "designed" KSP 

Something like what the Factorio devs have done would have been amazing during the alpha and beta programs. Squad have been lauded for "doing EA right" but I don't think they have. The Factorio devs ... those people did EA right; great communication, clear and public vision of what they wanted to get done, uncompromising release quality, etc... Doesn't mean Squad haven't done a good job with KSP (I'm still putting in 20+ hour playing weeks even after four years) just that they haven't exactly been ... good about communication historically.

Edited by regex
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WRT the 'KSP vision', I suspect that at the time it existed, it was seriously small beans compared with what KSP has become. Like, so small that it would be embarrassing to reveal the original roadmap now. I reckon it became apparent very quickly that the potential far exceeded that vision. What's awesome is that Squad totally ran with that and (as far as I can see) never, not even for a moment, looked back. Thank kraken for that, no? While a roadmap might have been (and continue to be) conspicuous by its absense, that probably reflects much more of a good thing than many give credit for - I mean, look what we got without it. For KSP to have been shackled to an unambitious plan just because it was 'THE vision' would have been a tragedy.

At least, that's how I look at it.

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That's an thought @The_Rocketeer about the KSP vision.

It also brings to mind what I've seen about the space shuttle (which someone also posted here on the forums) which was that what we know today was the product of so many iterations, that the thing we think of as "the Shuttle" was in fact the product of an evolutionary design process. It probably wouldn't have been created otherwise!

 

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