The_Rocketeer

SSTO is a great catchall. Just switch Single for Several and you're golden.

I'm a millennial. So there's that. And you either don't understand me or you lack the imagination to comprehend what I'm saying to you. Either way I'm done with you for now.

@regex no, I have a problem with the game, not the rules. Those who have a problem with the rules can flout them as they like. I am comfortable with rules. I am uncomfortable with the quality of a game that requires you to break them, and exert godlike powers over the narrative universe, just to make up for defects in the progression and reward systems. This craps all over narrative continuity and immersion. What is the point in trying to establish a tourism infrastructure if I can reward myself with a bazillion kerbucks and skip the whole space-travel element completely? I can't really overstate this - career is the one place where this really monumentally matters in KSP. From responses like yours it seems like its not really ok for me to point out that it matters, because... too late? vOv Its ok for me to still be critical of the game even tho its been around 6 years. It would be a better game if it had seen more imagination go into the career mechanics. I don't have to be happy with the stock game just because I don't like to cheat or use mods and my own time to fix issues that the devs should have fixed before now. Its also ok for me to say that in my opinion a remark sounds like a millennial attitude even if the remark also applies to other demographics and individuals. Just because it applies to people like you too doesn't mean my opinion is invalid, tho I guess it might mean its incomplete. Maybe I should say "millennials and regex" next time.

Thanks for the history lesson, @regex, but you're not really telling me anything I didn't already know. Changing the rules has always changed the game. Take Poker for example - you can call it Poker, but that doesn't mean it's the game everyone else plays. I won't engage on the broader demographic point. KSP should be a game that stands on its own without mods, and certainly without the cheat menu. If it met those criteria, it would probably be a successful console game, and it could hardly hurt PC sales. Unfortunately you may be right about the economic stage of development, but hey, a man can dream...

Ditto, tho your approach seems to be to play with manual adjustment, and mine tends to be to just stop playing.

I am sure this has been the mentality behind the system we have, but it isn't very sensible. My 'modest goals' are to develop (and I mean develop, by building, testing, improving, field testing etc) surface rovers and atmospheric aircraft before I launch satellites to orbit or fly to the Mun - staying on Kerbin is pretty modest, right? The game punishes me for wanting to take that approach, by putting rover wheels and roll-on-roll-off cargo bays far too high up the tech tree, by making early landing gear far too weak and silly (brake or steer... hmm) for rough-terrain landings around Kerbin, and by making early jet engines incapable of reaching the altitudes required for atmospheric experiments and part testing. Yes, all of this would take a bit of an overhaul to fix... but then again not so great an overhaul as all that. The tech tree and contracts have already been fixed to the point of total customisability by modders in their spare time. What's lacking is a balanced reworking of both, together, to make a rewarding game experience. That's left up to the player to trial-and-error, which never happens because it's far easier and ultimately more immersive (crazy, right?) to cheat your way out of an unforeseen problem than put up with and work around it - still more than to try to improve the game by rigorous method. This is where the game developers ought to be earning their money, by doing the work of making the game wholesome enough that the cheats become a silly sideshow instead of a vital tool. I would discribe this as a very millennial attitude, and I don't hold with it. The rules of a game are the game. If you break them you're no longer playing the game, you're playing something that might look a lot like it, but it isn't it. It's not that I don't get the whole 'KSP is like LEGO, you can build and play whatever way you want' attitude - I do, that's really kinda central to my point. It should be possible to play KSP in career *with this mentality* without the game making you feel like you're doing it wrong.

The one where completing short-term goals rewards you with points you can spend on new research nodes. This could be a perfectly legitimate research concept in another game - works ok in a lot of RTS games I've played - but I don't think it suits KSP's style, it's too proscriptive. In KSP, difficulty doesn't naturally correlate to progression, so there's no balance to be struck between gamestage and power-ups/unlocks (like there is in a RTS game, where your opponents are getting tougher too). Unlocking the tree just makes the game more complete and delimits your options. To me, that's at odds with the sandbox exploration concept. I'd prefer a progression system that acknowledged and documented particular achievements more, and that allowed the player to customise their adventure without having to conform to narrow and arbitrary 'families' of progress, or else toil like an under-achiever doing fun things the boring way until the parts are unlocked, and doing the mission the fun way isn't going to be rewarded anymore.

I'd like to see a complete overhaul of the research concept. I always find it hugely hampers my game having contracts to go explore Mun right after I've just spent huge science points learning to retrieve atmospheric science reports. The system just feels badly thought through - the easiest way to get the parts to do a mission the way you want to do it (in my case the way it seems like it should be done, with permanancy, recycling and re-use in mind), is to do the same mission as a disposable one-shot using whacked-together parts that aren't really fit for purpose. And then the mission's done, and there's no reward for doing it again!!! So frustrating!

Maybe Squad should forget about publishing news of the finished product and only ever tell us about the last version they won't use and why. Then the clamour of 'what the hell, these look so great, just release already' would allow the player community to really set the standard themselves. No, this is a dreadful idea on many levels. I'll leave standards to the professionals.

*Crackle* *Beep* Mission Control, this is Orbiter. Please tell the boys and girls in Development thanks for their hard work. Orbiter out. *Crackle* Folks, the correct and most complete term is the Laurentian Great Lakes (refering to Laurentia, the craton on which modern North America resides). Lookie here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentia

Actually @monstah I think you cut to the point here. I'm talking about strategies for dealing with those feelings, not raising any question of validity at all. I really hope I've made that clear. I'll go away now.

@Terwin I am using the word as I understand it, which would seem to be in line with both the dictionary and the etymological definition. If I am misunderstood because other people use another definition, that is hardly my fault. Case by case, to a greater or lesser extent, both senses of meaning may be applicable. There's also a real difference between controlling emotions and controlling behaviour to avoid aggravating emotions. If someone is unhappy about a videogame purchase that has no foreseeable short-term resolution, there is little to be gained by frequenting to the community website for that game in the fain hope of good news, and still less to be gained by repeatedly restating the same complaints.

Not that I want to argue with you @technicalfool, but that must be approaching the definition of entitlement. You pay, you are entitled. But look, don't misunderstand me, I'm very pleased that Squad are supporting their customers in this, and if anything I'm disappointed that they don't get more credit for doing that - there are plenty of other software developers out there that have done much less. I'm also really sympathetic to the frustration of those customers in having paid for something that disappointed them. I think we've probably all been there. What I'm saying here, probably a little cack-handedly, is that those same customers do have a choice whether to go on feeling bad about it or not. Choosing to go on minding about it is likely to cause more distress than choosing otherwise. Sometimes just walking away is the best thing for everyone. It doesn't mean you can't turn around later if you change your mind, but it does mean nobody is making you suffer right now except you.

Hey man, you pasted the new version and made me feel dated! Call it even.

It's ok, part of entitlement is being allowed to be rude and upset and irritated and annoyed. But ur game is still broke, and your misery is still more bothersome to you than me. Seriously, I'm not recommending you (and dozens like you) move on for my sake, but yours.

What will happen when you run out of patience? You'll stop waiting? Demand a refund? Forget Squad ever existed? I suggest you do that now. When the Blitworks port is eventually released, it will stand or fall on its own merit regardless of what went before and how people felt about it. If it's good, and if u're still interested in videogames in or around the genre, you'll almost certainly hear it's good, and u can decide then whether it's worth the price being asked at the time. If it's bad, you'll hear it's bad, and no skin off your nose because you already walked out on that relationship and good riddance. Alternatively you can keep complaining about that (metaphorical) broken toy you got given for Christmas that one time and how it ruined Christmas forever, and your whole childhood, and maybe your life. And it won't change a damn thing.

@invision watch this and lament your mis-spent youth.

Did you know that Bob the Builder is actually a quantum theorist, and that lately he's invented time-travel?

When the US buys a show from the UK they invariably tear the beating heart out of it and still think they made it better

Badum tish!

Yeh, unfortunately the 'more fun things to do, more effort on planetary surface detail' pleas are very old and very ignored, or worse overwhelmed by the 'market forces' argument (at this stage it would cost too much for too little profit), or the 'it wouldn't work anyway' argument (a boring planet with a volcano on it is still a boring planet), or the 'don't change my game for me' arguments (not everybody cares about planet surfaces, and they have their own preferred improvements). And a bunch of other arguments. But feel free to carry the torch for a while. You'll find it makes you a target and casts a light that illuminates an awful lot of ugliness.

Actually Bob the Builder says says 'can we fix it', and in stock KSP, the answer is "nup, let's just get a new one". Anyway, both of them losers are just sidekicks to the mighty Jeb (and equally-but-differently mighty Val). I mean, imagine Maverick from Top Gun, and then team him up with Leonard and Howard from TBBT. Nobody cares.

*put's on best Irish accent* This thread's been a real trill.

I'm guessing legal reasons. This whole console release has been a really bad experiment for Squad, and its hard to imagine how much worse it could have been without the business going bust. On the other hand, they haven't given up yet, and there remains real hope for redemption. As frustrating as this has been for console players, they can't claim they've been abandoned with shoddy product, and that I think speaks volumes about the sort of developer Squad wants to be.

I like @pandaman's suggestion. Research Specialist contracts could completely replace tourism afaic. Conceptually, space tourism is philosophical madness anyway.