TLTay

My theory is that it's people for whom gaming isn't much of a thing, but somehow got pulled in by KSP. As in, they don't play other games, or at least modern ones. It's easy to impress someone with nothing else in mind to compare it to. Must be the sound. Because it's not the graphics. Also, not many others are seeing it. For example, if I sit in a BMW, I don't grasp the added "value." Marketing and expectation setting could perhaps be a factor?

What, OP? Seriously? I cannot imagine someone who actually plays other modern games saying KSP2 looks even half-decent. It's so underwhelming the devs announced a they will be working on a terrain overhaul on the first day! The response from the community was THAT BAD. I thought they were joking us with potato-mode graphics and holding the scatter density back in the teaser pics leading up release, but then they went and dropped the turd just like that.

You have more optimism than I have. I think it's in a position where sales will need to cover costs or it's over. Maybe there's a chance. The thing I find odd is how the positive/negative review count is almost perfectly tracking 50/50 positive/negative, and has been since I started watching around 3k reviews. If they weren't game reviews, I'd swear someone was throwing the numbers to keep it at least 50% positive... I mean, I've checked in on the numbers and have repeatedly seen them within a double digit number of reviews of eachother. The odds are too low to be coincidence. I'd say it was fans doing it, but frankly there is coordination needed to keep pacing the positive reviews off of negative reviews. I'm not sure what has been going on there, but it seems fishy. Why not 47% positive? 56%? Why has it been right at the mark and often by fractions of a percent? I'll stop short of pointing fingers, but maybe somebody capable wants this thing to live. Numbers were roughly valid at time of posting.

You are the funding now.

Looks like I remembered the wrong end of March. Yes, it's the 31st, not the 1st. That gives them a month to assess whether sales will cover development costs. If there are 50 employees making on average 70k yearly, they'll need to sell 6k copies a month just to cover salary. It's possible, I guess. The trailers look neat. Not sure what the other expenses look like. Maybe they can keep it alive and turn it into a gem. In the mean time, goodwill has been meaningfully impacted.

Review of hours played by people who have reviewed the game as on now: 6840 total reviews. 66% have played for 1 hour or more. 41% played for 2 hours or more 29% played for 3 hours or more 20% played for 4 hours or more 9% played for 5 hours or more 5% played for 6 hours or more 5% for 7 hours+ 5% for 8 hours + 3% for 9 hours + That's a pretty steep dropoff for a release weekend. Very few people are making this the fun of their weekend after all the hype. 2/3 of people haven't even played 3 hours. Only 5% could be considered to be making KSP2 a primary entertainment choice this weekend. Looks like it's getting refunded or put back on the shelf for later by a great many people.

I just tried to watch that shadowzone video, and was greeted by a 2 minute commercial for KSP2 EA. It was awesome. Watch it if you can. They literally seem to have put more effort into the commercial than the game. Look at how much work went into it. The marketing team is well-funded and on point. Development... eh. Not so much.

It's not about what they can fix or not, this game hit the limit if the accounting/finance/management team's ability to tolerate expenses. Contrary to the flowery language, it wasn't put in early access so we can tell them what we think. It was rushed out the door at the last minute possible because management is done paying for development. If the game cannot cover its own development costs from this point forward, it is done. Gone. Cancelled. They're DONE paying development costs, and that's why out now.

We're probably a year out from stability or performance comparable to KSP1. Probably 3 years out from version 1.0. The interviews I saw from the youtubers of Nate and Nertea revealed just how little of the roadmap is in process. Although enthusiastic, the answers were barren of detail and betrayed just how little of the content has even been fully planned, let alone partially implemented. This was announced in August 2019. It wouldn't have been appropriate to even announce a game if it were in this state, much less set a release window. We are 3 years on from announce with a horribly buggy tech demo with no meat. I'm not sure what happened, but I expect cancellation. They may try to salvage parts of it by creating more KSP1 DLC out of it if they can port planets or functionality over. The fans bought already, the non-fans probably won't buy now. Can they keep the lights on? We will see.

The steam reviews keep bouncing from 49% to 50% positive. I've been watching since it was about 2k reviews. It seems like people are rushing in to try to offset negative reviews with positive ones. So far the content of negative reviews is about the product in its current state, and the content of positive reviews seems to be based on it being expected to get better over time and signaling support for the product. Only a small portion of the positive reviews seemed positive on the current product, with many people seemingly trying to convince themselves that their time and money are well spent. It seems that if the reviews were only counted based on what is paid for and played today, they would be overwhelmingly negative. Over the next week, we will be able to see what percent of reviewers actually bothered to play for more than a few hours. I expect many will not find it worthy of their time, despite signaling their allegiance with a positive review. There seem to be 2 categories of positive reviewers: "superfans" who are playing 10+ hours these last 2 days, and "investors" who've played low hours and have seemingly shelved the game despite leaving a positive review. The single most damning thing is looking at the concurrent player count in KSP1 right after launch go up. It's the highest it has been since the lockdowns. There can be little other explanation than the people who were hyped about KSP2 were disappointed and bailed back to KSP1 to get their fix. As of writing, there are 15k players playing KSP2 right now, down from 26k concurrent players. Viewers on twitch dropped from 28k at peak to 7k right now. Also of note is how rapidly the player count seems to be dropping compared to patterns for other recently released games. It will be interesting to see how many people play for how long after the signalling and cheerleading phase is over. I've said it before, and I'll say it again to unreceptive audience: if you're very attached to this game, you need to prepare yourself for the possible event it gets cancelled. T2 made their promise of release this fiscal year by a week. The promise was kept, now what happens next depends on the finance department's assessment of ROI. They'll be looking at metrics and sales, you can't signal them not to cancel. They only care about money. If they project continued losses going forward, that's it. Plug pulled. They will write it off. They've written off bigger.

Just give it the score you think it deserves for the money it costs. A review of the game isn't a review of your fanhood, or of your support for the project, or of the developers. It's a review of the product in current state. I'll skip reviewing it since I won't be playing soon. Performance issues or not, it lacks the features I wanted in KSP2, so I'll wait until it has them. Let's not conspire to throw the honesty of the reviews, please.

They made the choice they made and it's too late for do-overs. Not everyone thinks the manner of speaking was the best way to appeal to the widest audience. There's no need to to throw around talk of bias of any kind unless it's overt. People are reacting to a manner of speaking, not a gender. I'm pretty sure the the voice actor is Paige from one of the feature videos. Voice and name both fit. Nobody was commenting "ew, gross voice" anywhere for that video. It's not the person the people are reacting to. It's the method of delivery, and more specifically, for age groups very recently removed from media that used similar method of speaking. I politely ask people to refrain from passively accusing others of unwitting sexism over a simple disagreement of delivery style.

I guess I should check out the discord? Lots of drama on there too?

It's not named after Paige from the feature videos is it? The voice might fit.

This has been a disappointment, OP. I don't really know what else can be said that hasn't been said somewhere already.

I'm preparing myself for news of cancellation if sales and reviews are bad enough. I recommend you all do the same.

Watched a couple videos, looks like even on the absolute beast of a computer they were playing on it was borderline unplayable with parts counts that are perfectly reasonable for average players to use in KSP1.

Perhaps someone capable can make an ultra-low texture resolution mod to reduce RAM/VRAM usage?

It's possible that a lot of wings and control surfaces got the ax in favor of procedural, so I doubt even a simple craft converter would be useful.

I don't see why the developer can't just include a built-in benchmark like many other games have. Given the high spec requirements, it would end up getting added to a lot of YouTube hardware reviews and benchmark videos. Nearly free publicity over the course of the years.

It exceeds the minimums, so yes, it should provide a playable 1080p experience at low or better. (Assuming CPU is ok)

GHz is not the relevant factor, as a 1 GHz processor from 10 generations ago will perform wildly differently from a modern processor locked to the same speed. It's not like the torque rating in a car where the number actually means the same thing 10 years ago as it does today. You'll have to compare your processor with others via some kind of benchmark scores to tell where you stand.

The big issue with the system requirements isn't even how high they are, it's that they were completely unexpectedly high. People who have been closely following the promotional material would not have guessed this high at all for the GPU by the looks of the game. Judging by the terrain and the visible flat planes on a rounded object, I would have personally guessed a 1050 or so to be the "minimum" target for a good experience. Nothing shown so far seems to warrant a 3080. Nothing. At. All. Not to mention the 3080 is the target... not for 4K, but for 1440p? Yowch. I've got a system that almost makes recommended specs, but man. I thought I'd be running ultra at buttery smooth framerates based on the promo stuff. For requiring hardware like this, you should be getting cyberpunk-grade visuals, not whatever they've been showing us. TLDR: People are mad because specs don't correlate with the visual quality at all.

I've been reading both here and the reddit, and I've got to say that the hype is off the charts. As you can clearly see, the commenting metrics are indicating strong customer engagement. Our test subjects fitted with blood pressure and heart rate monitors are indicating heightened levels of excitement. Emotional language analysis of customer posts indicate optimal customer engagement. Customers are so excited by the product that many are planning to build or upgrade their PC to the tune of hundreds or even thousands of dollars. This will surely be great success.

It didn't appear to come from the craft when it touched down. Looks like an effect added to the screen and not a 3d effect.