Jump to content

KSP Weekly: A short briefing


SQUAD

Recommended Posts

32 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

DLCs aren't a good idea imho. Aside from the fact that they're often seen as exploitative, which is a moral question and nothing to do with economics, it doesn't really make much business sense.

  • KSP is already so good and so replayable that new players can go a looong time without ever augmenting it at all.
  • When you do want added features, mods are numerous, mostly excellent, and completely free.
  • SO DLCs would have to be substantial augments - i.e. more-than-mods - to the stock experience to make them worth the extra premium.
  • This carries a substantial investment in dev-hours to write new code, QA and bugfix, as much or more than any additional stock feature so far.
  • This means the price would have to be high to make a healthy return.
  • This depresses sales until the Sales, when margins are slashed anyway.
  • Ultimately, very little money is made.

It would make more sense for Squad to take their new-found acumen and invest the same dev time on a brand new project.

KSP is great, now show us something new.

Logically your last four bullet points would also apply to a new game. That new game also has the added risk of being new and therefore not having an established fan base ready to buy it.

And on a personal note - and I'm not aiming this comment at you, I completely reject the notion that DLC is either exploitative or a moral question. A company is selling an entertainment product (and goodness knows that the world isn't stuffed with competing  entertainment products). After that there are two simple questions (if not necessarily simple answers). Does the customer care about the product enough to buy it? And is the business charging the right price to make a profit and stay in business?

Its entertainment, it's an entirely disposable product and this outraged notion that there's any sort of moral question attached to the act of selling it is utter poppycock.

Edited by KSK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, KSK said:

Logically your last four bullet points would also apply to a new game. That new game also has the added risk of being new and therefore not having an established fan base ready to buy it.


But the potential returns blow any KSP DLC out of the water. And Squad's established fanbase is their KSP customers (assuming, like me, they are now a fan).
 

1 minute ago, KSK said:

Its entertainment, it's an entirely disposable product and this outraged notion that there's any sort of moral question attached to the act of selling it is utter poppycock.


Moral questions are attached to everything we do. When economists forget that and people don't call them out, soylent green.

It boils down to what you thought you were buying when you bought the game. If what you thought you were buying was a whole single piece of entertainment software, and it turns out that that piece of software is actually just the first piece in a modular set of pieces that build the whole software together, and that you'll have to pay extra for the rest of the pieces, then you have a right to demand your money back, because that product was mis-sold to you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was hoping that, given the programming manpower which Squad has picked up recently (the last three hires have all been experienced programmers with some serious shipped-game pedigrees behind them), that part of the 'secret' feature might be a broader code refactoring away from Unity's GameObject (which isn't threadsafe) to a custom implementation (I believe FromTheDepths also did this, however that's back on Unity4 so I'm not sure that still applies?) to leverage more advantage from multi-threading (if there's a realistic gain from the effort).  If stuff is in QA now, I wonder when we'll start seeing release candidates for 1.2.3 (if it's bugfixes) or 1.3 (if it's a feature update)?

They were looking for a lead artist too I think, I wonder if they've had any bites for that position, since having a lead artist in house is probably a requirement for the art/model overhaul which is capturing so much... hot verbage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:


But the potential returns blow any KSP DLC out of the water. And Squad's established fanbase is their KSP customers (assuming, like me, they are now a fan).
 


Moral questions are attached to everything we do. When economists forget that and people don't call them out, soylent green.

It boils down to what you thought you were buying when you bought the game. If what you thought you were buying was a whole single piece of entertainment software, and it turns out that that piece of software is actually just the first piece in a modular set of pieces that build the whole software together, and that you'll have to pay extra for the rest of the pieces, then you have a right to demand your money back, because that product was mis-sold to you.

Too many variables here. Depends if those pieces are playable individually. Depends if they were genuinely mis-sold. Depends if the purchaser allowed themselves to be blinded by the hype to the extent that they ignored what the company was trying to tell them and substituted their own reality instead.

But most of all, be an informed consumer. Make sure that what you think you're buying is what you're actually buying. For video games at any rate, the internet isn't short of reviews, customer comments, LetsPlay videos etc. And for goodness sake buy a game for what it is now and not what you fondly imagine it might become. 

And yes I suppose you could argue that there are moral choices attached to everything we do. Happily for a disposable luxury like a video game, you can simply choose not to buy it if you have any moral objections to it. Again - be an informed consumer. However, once  you've decided you want the game anyway then the act of being charged money for it is in no way a moral issue.

I should also add that there are plenty of products where I think price absolutely is a moral issue. Entertainment isn't one of them though.

Anyhow - we're getting off-topic here. Happy to take the conversation to private messages if you like.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@KSK the variables don't count for anything if what you thought you bought isn't what you were actually sold. That is the essense of mis-selling.

Many of us bought KSP when it was still in alpha, and at that time the final product was clearly still not manifest in many respects. Nonetheless, we were assured that many general and specific features would be added eventually, and we were not advised that future content would come at additional premiums. In other words, any feature that was at any time proposed or implied as being part of the game's core development that is subsequently released as a premium DLC breaks the accord that was the basis of our purchase. On that basis, I believe anybody who felt they had been mis-sold the product would have a reasonable case for demanding a refund, if not insisting on being awarded the DLC for free.

Don't get me wrong, I'm on the fence about the morality of DLCs for KSP - that was actually why I said what I did. But there is no justification for dismissing anyone's sense of exploitation out of hand. The particulars of any case have to be considered on their own merits since there is no moral precedent for the specific relations between software producers and software consumers.

And whether a product is disposable or not has nothing to do with the morality of how it is sold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Many of us bought KSP when it was still in alpha, and at that time the final product was clearly still not manifest in many respects. Nonetheless, we were assured that many general and specific features would be added eventually

I was offered no such assurance. I actually recall agreeing on a form that told me that what I was buying at the time was an incomplete game with no promise of future updates.

The fact that after 3.5 years I'm still getting un-promised updates for free is a boon, not a moral requirement.

EDIT: I was also promised that any updates WOULD be free FOR ME, but I was never promised that they'd exist. So far, Squad has kept the one promise they DID make to me.

Edited by 5thHorseman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@5thHorseman I'm not suggesting that Squad has failed to keep promises, but ambiguety in a contract always favours the lesser party. If a buyer does not understand the specific product they are buying - a genuine danger in the realm of in-development software, and clearly the case if they believe they are entitled to anything they are not entitled to - then there is always an argument that the product was missold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Woke up this morning with a mortal dread of angry abuse. Let me make a handful of things clear:

  • Squad to the best of my knowledge have always behaved entirely within the established code of ethics for entertainment software developers.
  • Mis-selling is a really big deal, and I am in no way alleging that Squad has ever done it.
  • On the other hand, that's not to say that a legal case couldn't ever be brought but someone else if they so chose.
  • I don't think DLCs or profit motive in general are unethical.

Where that gets cloudy is that discrimination on the basis of disposable wealth is a fundamental tenet of any entertainment industry. This particular form of discrimination assumes that if a person works hard enough to deserve high-quality recreational pursuits (like videogaming) they should be able to afford them. Unfortunately for many, not least in Mexico, but also in wealthier countries like the US and UK, this isn't the case. The effect of DLCs is to aggravate the sense of injustice for those who struggle/d to afford the game in the first place.

For those who can easily afford it and see it purely as a financial arrangement, that's clearly not an issue, but fundamentally those people are not experiencing relative poverty. Having a perspective that means it's no problem for you doesn't mean it's no problem at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, NoMrBond said:

the last three hires have all been experienced programmers with some serious shipped-game pedigrees behind them

Really? The only games that were mentioned in the context of recent hires were the games they liked, not the ones they worked on.

Edited by cfds
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Woke up this morning with a mortal dread of angry abuse. Let me make a handful of things clear:

  • Squad to the best of my knowledge have always behaved entirely within the established code of ethics for entertainment software developers.
  • Mis-selling is a really big deal, and I am in no way alleging that Squad has ever done it.
  • On the other hand, that's not to say that a legal case couldn't ever be brought but someone else if they so chose.
  • I don't think DLCs or profit motive in general are unethical.

Where that gets cloudy is that discrimination on the basis of disposable wealth is a fundamental tenet of any entertainment industry. This particular form of discrimination assumes that if a person works hard enough to deserve high-quality recreational pursuits (like videogaming) they should be able to afford them. Unfortunately for many, not least in Mexico, but also in wealthier countries like the US and UK, this isn't the case. The effect of DLCs is to aggravate the sense of injustice for those who struggle/d to afford the game in the first place.

For those who can easily afford it and see it purely as a financial arrangement, that's clearly not an issue, but fundamentally those people are not experiencing relative poverty. Having a perspective that means it's no problem for you doesn't mean it's no problem at all.

That's fair - thank you. I don't agree with all your points but thanks for putting them so constructively.

I agree that genuine mis-selling is a big deal. However, genuine mis-selling is a different beast to 'this game wasn't everything I thought it would be and I'm unhappy with the game company because of that.' See No Man's Sky for example - lots of noise, lots of fan outrage but when the case went to court, mis-selling was not found. One might disagree with that decision but the mis-selling question was given a proper airing in an appropriate forum by people (unlike myself) who know the applicable law. And as somebody already noted on this thread, the law will generally favour the consumer in these kinds of cases.

Your point about DLC causing a sense of injustice is well taken but ultimately (and correct me if I'm mishearing you here), that injustice basically boils down to 'I can't buy all the high quality entertainment that I want - and that's unfair.' That is certainly unfortunate, and poverty (relative or otherwise) and social justice in general are issues that I feel very strongly about.  But I'm afraid I simply cannot see an inability to buy what is essentially a luxury good, as a moral issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, joebopie said:

Sooo guna fix the stuttering??? KSP is unplayable until its fixed....  

it seems stupid to add anything else as its horrible to play the game that freezes every 2 seconds.... cannot play the game until it actually runs smooth.

MemGraph is a good way to track down issues with garbage collect.

If that's what's creating your stutters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, joebopie said:

Sooo guna fix the stuttering??? KSP is unplayable until its fixed....  

it seems stupid to add anything else as its horrible to play the game that freezes every 2 seconds.... cannot play the game until it actually runs smooth.

What OS are you using? For OSX, you might want to turn the Space Center Crew off. I don't know if that's still an issue (I use Windows most of the time, and it's always off anyhow), but it was a big problem in 1.2.0.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

What OS are you using? For OSX, you might want to turn the Space Center Crew off. I don't know if that's still an issue (I use Windows most of the time, and it's always off anyhow), but it was a big problem in 1.2.0.

i use win 10, and the game have never run worse for stutters  (inbetween the judders it runs fine...)  i never upgraded my HW since i bought KSP years ago and its now unplayable.

I've used MemGraph and all it showed me is something that I CANNOT FIX.... my setting are already on the lowest.

there is already enough bug reports of LOAD of people having this problem, since 1.2. its gotten worse.

I haven't played KSP for more than an hour for about a year now because its HORIBLE to play its torturous.

I love playing KSP and I now HATE the devs for screwing up my and many others enjoyment by ignoring soooo many people for so long when it comes to this problem. 

 

 

Edited by joebopie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, cfds said:

Really? The only games that were mentioned in the context of recent hires were the games they liked, not the ones they worked on.

THIS gives me some positive thoughts and strenghens my believe in the new Team

the Fact that the Guys like some games, implies that they actually may have seen a proper running game. (the chance is quite high)

So they KNOW how a proper running game can look alike....

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A couple of versions ago, after Squad improved stuttering by rewriting LINQ and For/Each statements, I started over with no mods. I added them back slowly, as mod updates came out. Then I added back a mod called "Hot Spot" and the stuttering was back full-force, every 2 seconds. I removed that mod and performance was back to normal.

Edited by JonathanPerregaux
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, genbrien said:

sneek peek of tonight KSP Weekly

 

-localisation is going well

-console patch is going well

-progress on the super-duper exiting new content that we can't say anything is going well

-small poem

 

you can thank me later

I have a feeling that the devs are going to reveal the super secret thing before March. Then again, I could be completely wrong. :P 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In my mind, KSP fulfilled it's part of the early access deal when they declared their game to be 1.0, like it or not.

The leap of faith you took as an Early Access or Alpha buyer is that you trusted the game would be sufficiently fleshed out by the time the developer arbitrarily called it 1.0

 

Anything beyond that is gravy to the player, and or potential additional revenue for the developers.  You can either continue to update the game for free until such time as you again, arbitrarily decide to stop, or you can start charging money again for DLC updates that not all original customers are entitled to.  As a customer you're not forced to buy it, as your initial agreement with Squad has already been satisfied by the 1.0 milestone.

 

This situation has always been looming in the back of my mind as I imagined the finalization of KSP.  When the very out-of-the-blue "Hey everyone its 1.0!"  happened, I did not feel KSP had all the things it needed to feel "done", but that's not my call according to the terms of the agreement I entered into.   It did signal the beginning of my feeling that something is amiss at Squad, and the subsequent drama of everyone leaving and the botched console release has not left me with a confidence as to the direction... or perhaps the competency of whoever is calling the shots at Squad (owners, not devs).   The additions to the game since 1.0 have been great, but I feel like Squad shoots themselves in the foot financially with each one.  

Imagine a CommsNet DLC, far more fleshed out than what we have now.  Pay for it if you want to, or don't if you don't.   Realize there is a cadre of KSP players who got the ComsNet update, but turn the ComsNet right off and pretend its not there.  That's their perogative to be sure, but development time was "wasted" in that regard, giving a free update to someone that didn't or doesn't want it.   Why not charge people that DO want it?

 

Has there ever been a Final Features list provided by Squad?  Part of this confusion is on Squad's hands for not outlining the goals and drawing a clear line as to what "done" means. Many of my other early access projects I participate in have a roadmap, with set goals.  It helps to establish a vision of what the final product will look like so the rug is not pulled out from under you when one day 1.0 is announced.  Sure adjustments are made when practicality and feasibility are taken into consideration when actual development happens.  Sometimes things are harder to pull off than they are to imagine.  This is kept in check by actual development updates, with team member contributions and community input.  Take DayZ for example.  Its standalone development has been less-than-smooth, but the transparency and communication by developers has been extraordinary.  I know what the goals are, I know whats coming, but I dont know when or how long.  I have an idea, but its open to adjustment because of realities. Do other people in the DayZ community still cry foul and rant and rave because they think development should be faster/better/more of what they like?  Of course, I think that comes with having a community composed of humans, we're dumb hairless primates after all.  

 

At this point, if I want more KSP, I will gladly pay for it.  I paid for all kinds of Fallout 4 DLC.  Can I get tons of content free from mods?  Sure I can.  But can I also get content that modders cannot produce, including engine changes and core gameplay changes? You betcha.  Do I want Squad and KSP-like things to keep happening?  Yes.

In KSP terms:

Would I pay for an "clouds" DLC?  Like, just visual clouds like you can achieve from a mod?  No way. 

Would I pay for a "weather" DLC?  If it had wind, and storms, and turbulance and assorted other atmospheric things, and a bunch of parts associated with it?  Yes!

Would I pay for a "here-is-5-new-planets-that-dont-even-have-crater-work-like-the-Mun" DLC? No.

Would I have paid for a ComsNet DLC?  If it were fleshed out a little more than it is now?  Sure.  Would I have paid for the exact ComsNet we got?  Probably, to support the game. 

Would I pay for a fully functional and working Realism DLC with humans instead of Kerbals, in our Solar System with real life parts from the Soviet and US space programs including things like weird orbits and tilts that can't be accomplished now without some finagling?  HSP, Human Space Program?  Yes.  I would pay $40-60 for that, as if it were KSP 2.

Would I pay AAA $60 for Squad to take KSP to a different engine and have it look modern and flashy like Elite: Dangerous  (space scenery wise, not the look of the spaceships).  KSPHD or somesuch.  You bet I would.

 

Do I have all these whacky ideas, and do we all go back and forth on this issue because we haven't been provided a proper Roadmap?  Indeed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, genbrien said:

sneek peek of tonight KSP Weekly

 

-localisation is going well

-console patch is going well

-progress on the super-duper exiting new content that we can't say anything is going well

-small poem

 

you can thank me later

You are obviously the twitter-bot that I prophesied.

 

:wink:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...