Pthigrivi

Anyone have experience/ recommendations on prebuilt sellers? ABS, MSi, iBuypower etc? Mainly Im looking for reliability and good support.

No I totally get this and it is a fine balance. You do have to be practical about how and when you change things. Im an architect so I see both sides of it. Since Wube has a pretty stellar perception among fans I thought I'd use this recent Factorio Friday Facts as an illustration (Full text here). Basically the story was they had a whole planet designed but after seeing it in action it just felt boring so they dropped most of the initial design and started from scratch. I think the result is pretty awesome. I've also mentioned Cyberpunk a few times. They've utterly reinvented the perk tree and loot drop system--two of the most core elements in an RPG--much for the better. But if early on they said "Oh yeah btw we're just going to remove most of the value of randomized armor and clothes will basically be cosmetic" people would have thrown even more of a fit. They wouldn't have any of the first-hand play experience to realize wandering around looking like a spazoid because some random tshirt had a better AC stat isn't actually good gameplay and since the game is all about cybernetic modification it doesn't make sense in that world anyway. In the end cleaning up the messy, incomplete release and implementing those kinds of major overhauls took 3 years. When it comes to some of these creative processes sometimes you've just got to try things and see if they work. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't, and yeah its not efficient and it takes a long time, but in the end it's the only way new ideas can be made to actually work.

I have no argument with the first part of your post because I actually do think negative feedback on the merits of actual content is great and useful and totally warranted. I just think it can be done politely and without taking any of this quite so personally as some seem to. Maybe Im wrong and they really do feel personally wounded by this, but it feels to me kind of hyperbolic and hyperbolic arguments don't mean much. This last bit though I do disagree with, mainly because Im in a creative field and doing this kind of work is rarely a linear process. If you're really vetting and testing and and seeing what works and what doesn't there will be lots of things that appear one way as WIP and emerge completely differently as a finished product. That ability to make big changes along the way is really important to producing good work, but folks watching from the outside or only seeing small snippets might not understand how you got from A to B. Normally thats fine, but given how folks tend to react to being shown one thing and being delivered another I wouldn't blame them at all for just keeping everything under wraps. Making creative and practical changes to better the end-product doesn't make you a liar, but there are a great many folks here who will find a way to frame it that way and thats a drag for all involved. Yeah totally. I may have said this here on another thread but for me KSP2 probably won't return as my main gaming obsession until resources are implemented. I still kinda wish they would swap interstellar and resources for that reason, but I know resources is probably the hardest gameplay nut to crack so its gonna be a while anyway.

The point is that the tone of personal aggrievement is so wildly overstated given the actual stakes of the situation that it just can’t be taken seriously. The actual things you mentioned: wobble, font, UI, orbital decay and I would add my own list absolutely were of the highest priority and everyone was pretty clear on that. Again those are genuine substantive issues and 100% fair game. They have and are tackling those things as they should be. You’ve got to realize though by focusing instead on “but you promised!” complaints you’re actually disincentivizing transparency, because any sneak peak or WIP or planned feature leak just becomes fodder for more accusations of false promises, even if features are cut or altered for legitimate reasons. If fans are going to throw a fit every time their expectations aren’t met its best to just not say or release anything until its fully ready.

No I completely agree. The latter is exactly what folks should do, and I haven’t been shy in voicing my own view on missing game elements that are sorely holding the game back (primarily flight and transfer planning tools, but also the lack of planetary mapping, no plans for LS, etc. ) I also acknowledge that Im just one data point among many and thats my personal perspective. I guess I think the genuine substance of the critique is enough and can only be muddied by dredging up personal slights.

So Im definitely going to dip in and try out colonies and interstellar but what Im really here for is resources. Thats when KSP becomes a real game for me. Probably gonna be a minute but thats fine. I like dabbling in the meantime. Even to do that more seriously though Im going to need to see some major improvements to maneuvers, transfers, and flight planning.

My question is: if all negative feedback is framed in the same tone of personally aggrieved apoplexy about process and promises rather than actual content and quality why and how should anyone take it seriously? Why not skip the theater and performative anger of it all and just cut to the actual, substantive feedback? Because as far as I can tell the former achieves nothing and dilutes and distracts from the latter.

But like, its still just a game, dude. You don’t have to buy it and you don’t have to play it. Purchases are voluntary and no one is dying here. This isn’t personal. All of the histrionic pearl clutching just seems so put on at this point. A lot of folks have given good feedback. Thats great. Thats useful. Continuing to whine for years and years on end about some apparent personal harm thats been done to you by a video game that didn’t live up to your expectations in the timeframe you imagined seems super weird to me. If you don’t have the patience to let the devs succeed or not that’s fine. Ymmv. If you’re really that mad just take your money and time to other games and move on with your life.

I mean really love this team and I think things are coming along nicely but I believe even they see it as getting on base after a tough at bat. Unfortunately we're living in a really toxic gaming culture and its got to be hard for passionate developers and designers to gauge real reactions and actionable feedback in a clear and honest way. The atmosphere from a vocal player standpoint is to take all of these things really personally, or pretend to take them really personally, and then engage in an over-the-top Kabuki dance of feigned rage demanding groveling supplication from the corporate entities they've been wronged by because they think thats the only way games improve. But it's kind of like Cable news outlets constantly running BREAKING NEWS banners. If you're always turning everything up to 11 then people who might listen might as well just tune you out. If players believe rage-bombing every title that doesn't meet their expectations is the only way to convince developers to improve their products then eventually developers are just going to take those flame-campaigns less seriously. I would guess they already are. They'll look to more balanced and genuinely informative heuristics to identify the worst problems and work their way up from there. As test case lets talk about Cyberpunk--widely dragged and laughed at when it first released and probably deservedly so. It probably should have incubated for a couple more years. And now all of the initial hard work of good writing and good VA and story can be capitalized on because they fixed most of the bugs and redesigned the core mechanics into something incredible. Which is great! I genuinely hope as colonies and interstellar and resources are phased in the folks at Intercept remain open to making big internal changes to game mechanics depending on how things play out. What matters in the end is how the 1.0 product actually plays. Is it fun? Is it deep? Are the actual mechanics well tuned? is QOL up to snuff? Thats what matters. In my experience most people in this world are doing their best to be good at what they do. They're already incentivized to do that. Heaping shame and vitriol on them usually makes things worse, not better. The changes Cyberpunk made weren't just because players dragged CDPR through the mud. In fact the more substantive changes outside of bug-fixes--police system, fixing drops and the tech tree, etc. only come from very specific and clear feedback on whats not working and then having the time and creative process to create new and better systems. I personally would argue if you as a gamer are dissatisfied you produce more specific and actionable feedback on whats wrong--and passionately so!--rather than focus on grievances.

Listen, lets pretend for a moment you actually care about KSP being a great game. I want you to think about your strategic approach to making that happen. Whats better: a) concrete, actionable, polite advice on real gameplay changes; or b) repetitious, unsolvable industry process complaints?

It's all a matter of how much time it takes to satisfy the need for the greatest number of people. If you take time to understand the nature of the idea and have the patience to truly solve problems in the right way and make something great most folks will feel like they got what they asked for even if it takes more time than they expected. Other people are fundamentally concerned first and foremost with perpetual dissatisfaction no matter the time or effort invested and making them happy is impossible and invites a kind of diminishing returns death spiral. My business, and most other businesses cut our losses when clients present that behavior.

I mean, we screen pretty hard against misanthropes who are utterly focused on their own personal disastifaction no matter what the reality is so that doesn't happen so much for us. Our clients are generally reasonable people who understand we are in a creative enterprise and the proof is in the pudding even if it takes longer than they initially expected. When folks are unreasonable we're understanding, but we'll probably take our time to make sure the final product is really up to snuff. We may shine them on in the process because often they suck up a hugely outsized amount of time compared to folks who are just as deserving but more constructively responsive.

Right on. It may have just been a product of my setup at the time. I've been a bit AFK on this forum mainly because I've been delving into other games and thinking a lot about automation and base-building dynamics while I wait for more substantial updates but I did enjoy FS quite a bit and I found performance and stability much improved. As you say about modded KSP1 there are some tools I find I really do need--flight planning, transfers, alarm clock chief among them. I also really want life support and trajectory prediction factoring drag but we'll see how all that goes. Im an architect by trade so it'll be fun in the interim to play with planetary static physics and base building when colonies arrive. I just don't see any utility in griping at the devs about pace. If they take till next year to release colonies I'll take my precious gaming moments Factorio megabasing. All games are an indulgent gift.

I think it depends a great deal on when you first interacted with it. I was an early adopter both of Factorio and of DSP, and frankly both were nearly unplayable on first release. I left them alone for a year or two and when I went back they were brilliant. Frostpunk was also utter frustration when I first played but is now one of my favorite games. Good things take time. I think KSP2 is on a great path. Honestly it won't even be a real game for me until resources come into it. Im very happy to wait a few years if that means the end product got the love it deserved. Like, also keep in mind Starfield despite its rollercoaster reputation is the only new franchise single-player game of last year to crack the top 10 of MAU last year. All of the actual money is in brainless live-service, V-buck microtransaction shooters like fortnite. People can complain all they like but all studios care about is how folks vote with their wallets. If you care about thoughtful games that are for folks who like to think about science and problem solving take some time and give a little love. Show a little patience. In large part thats because cars involve the actual health and safety of those who interact with them. Phones are a fundamental necessity of communication and most peoples economic life. Games are a pleasant luxury. If I design a house and it falls down on someone I'll expect to be sued. If I design a sofa and the folks saw and signed the proposal but then a week later just don't like the fabric very much thats on them.

This may be too general a discussion for this thread, but the topic is communication, timing, and expectations. I feel as though there we're in a weird zone in gaming fan relationships where the nature of creating high-quality, novel gaming experiences requires a truly stupendous amount of labor on the part of creators. Im in design, my friends and family are in engineering, finance, software, fashion, journalism, etc. Those industries have little in common but one thing: On time, On budget, On quality. Pick two. Thats the nature of the world. I don't say this lightly but the current status quo of game criticism is actually unreasonable because it has no recognition of this fundamental reality. Further, we live in a "client is always right" world and so no one actually involved in the production will tell you literally everything you want to know minute to minute. They'll be nice and agree with you even if your expectations don't make any material sense. Thats the world you live in. Learn to live with it. Some boomer I work with loves to spend hours loudly and obnoxiously haranguing lower-level service techs about software issues that the actual human being on the other end of the phone has no means of solving. Don't be that dude. Be reasonable. Have a little self and mutual awareness and think about what material benefit your time and their time is actually worth. As far as I can tell the only games that have released in the last few years with minimal bugs and high-polish were kept well in-secret for most of their development existence. We were happy and surprised in large part because there was exactly zero transparency until the product was at 99%. When it released Cyberpunk was mess, Dysonsphere was a mess, Factorio was a mess, Starfield is still kind of a mess. When ambitious games are released they are gonna kind of be a mess. Thats the nature of the biz. Thats the world you live in. If you don't have patience, if you're not willing to accept reality and wait 3 years for Cyberpunk to go from being kind of a release disaster to one of the best gaming experiences out there then you aren't being reasonable or realistic about what producing great modern games requires. Its a huge amount of cloistered incubtion followed by years of passionate fan feedback and developer follow-through. It's absolutely fine to have and voice criticisms. You absolutely need to make those criticism known. Just don't be a jerk about it. All of these artists and engineers and creative people are giving their time and their lives to make a nice little experience for you to take you away from your grueling existence for a few hours. By all means point out areas ripe for improvement, but have a little respect for the actual people on the other side of your post. Be passionate, be persistent, and be polite.

Sir people can have their opinions but that eclipse was awesome. *Note this post is in a joking tone

Man I've been away a while but things seemed pretty good after science released. Folks getting antsy again? I'm psyched for colonies and I think it'll breathe a lot more life into gameplay. Personally Im happy to wait.

What are we optimizing for? Fastest possible human extinction or? Can we pick a Chinese, Mesomerican or Egyptian leader?

Made it home! But the traffic is wild.

Google says "just beneath the moon".. maybe? Edit: no, thats where it will be on April 10th. Today it should be 6 degrees west of Jupiter and 24 degrees north east of the sun, if you've got one of those star-chart apps on your phone.

Man what a great day for it. Totality goes right over our house in VT, just hoping it takes less than 2h to get home from work with the highways clogged.

I mean I know all us oldheads want to see a mars mission on the TV before we die but we probably should use a reusable NSW transfer stage to LMO.

Id love to hear more on thruster and maneuverability updates as that seemed the the central hurdle on IFT3. Still sticking with gas thrusters or augmenting with a separate system?

I would say the overall scientific project of learning and understanding our universe is at least as old and absolutely as robust as any religion. Astronomers in China, Egypt, and Mesoamerica may not have used the word 'science' but the motivation to understand and predict physical phenomena was there. You don't need 100% institutional stability over hundreds of years, just trust that in the future just as in the past people will be motivated to understand the universe around them. I think thats a safe-enough bet. As to SpaceX going interstellar... I mean we know Elon. He loves big claims. They marketed Dragon as a Mars lander. By the time they actually do start colonizing mars I doubt Starship itself will be the leading proposal. I think it's a great design for mass to orbit and that form factor will be useful for decades if it's successful. It's obviously silly to compare it to anything like a working interstellar vehicle.

Agreed. Again--unconfirmed, but I see 3 likely reasons for booster RUD: A) the engine relight should have worked but was delayed/asymmetric and threw off the suicide burn, or B1) gridfins were miscalibrated / B2) the grid fins were deliberately testing control authority range. Granted this is a MUCH larger vehicle than falcon 9 and fuel mass slosh, descent speed etc. are very different but aerodynamic control is something SX has a lot of experience with. I'll be curious to hear more info on this. Starship is different. I've heard some vehicles deliberately roll in orbit to manage heat... but...? given the sound of crowd reaction in the room, the plan for a fuel transfer and relight test I think this roll was not in-program. You can see the vehicle is basically continuously venting through most of the suborbital journey and if those ports are exactly oppositional to keep tank pressure constant that shouldn't be a problem. If there is a bias at all--even slight--it could induce rotation and tumbling over time. Once they reentred with the atmosphere so thin it didn't look like the fins could reasert roll stability, but worse Starship pitched aft-down. Someone could correct me but I thought I heard the fuel transfer was supposed to move propellant to the header tank at the nose of the vehicle, which would have helped keep the nose down and forward as air pressure built up rather than tilting engines-down.