Older versions available on Steam and the KSP website

[Atlas2342]

6 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

So the devs should spend development time coding a water mark into old, obsolete versions to help avoid support issues? Why would they do this, when that time could be spent on the current and upcoming versions? When they can avoid those support issues by simply not distributing those old, obsolete versions?

I get that there's some nostalgia value in old versions, really I do (and I was disappointed to lose all the versions prior to 0.23 I had hoarded in a hard disk failure). But asking Squad to spend money and development time to distribute and modify older versions is nonsense, IMO. Those resources are much better spent on the current version!

True, unless you want Soon^TM  to be Sooner^TM ...

[John FX]

19 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

asking Squad to spend money and development time to distribute and modify older versions is nonsense, IMO. Those resources are much better spent on the current version!

 

Well that`s thread over in my mind. I can`t imagine anyone preferring to have old versions maintained instead of the actual current version getting bugs fixed, features added etc.

[todofwar]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

 

Well that`s thread over in my mind. I can`t imagine anyone preferring to have old versions maintained instead of the actual current version getting bugs fixed, features added etc.

I don't know why it keeps coming back to resources spent supporting older versions. Back in the olden days you got a cd and lived with all the bugs that it may have come with. This idea that games need constant support is nonsense. Just host a set number of versions, someone already pointed out a few good benchmarks, that you can download once you have purchased KSP. No support, no help from Squad, and a nice disclaimer on the site you download from informing you of that. 

There's another game, Rimworld, that I really enjoyed up until a certain version where just too much got added into the game. And while I'm sure many people appreciate it, I stopped playing because it lost the charm it had. That all happened in alpha development so there's less of an argument to be made, but for KSP we're not going to have the ability to go back and get KSP 1. I still play Borderlands 1 occasionally, sometimes you want to go back to an older game for whatever intangible reason. This constant development has allot of upside, but this loss of older versions is an unnecessary downside. And again, you only need a handful of versions. Bare minimum, go with KSP 1.0, 2.0, etc. Maybe include one additional in between version, but not necessary. 

[John FX]

3 hours ago, todofwar said:

I don't know why it keeps coming back to resources spent supporting older versions. Back in the olden days you

And there is the answer. This is not the good old days where software was made, then released and never changed again. People expect bugfixes, they expect support if something goes wrong.

As to whether this attitude is correct does not matter, there are enough people who will expect such a service that resources will have to be put towards dealing with the old versions or Squad will get much negative online attention.

Personally if I were Squad I would not release previous versions because I have seen the response they get from doing pretty much anything these days.

As a community we really should stop being so upset about things because at some point Squad are going to go "You know what? Let`s just take this pile of money and sit on a beach instead of updating a game when we get no positive feedback from doing it"

You never know, if the community had been more nice in the past maybe they would be more open to taking a risk and releasing old versions...

Edited April 15, 2016 by John FX
spellung

[todofwar]

2 hours ago, John FX said:

And there is the answer. This is not the good old days where software was made, then released and never changed again. People expect bugfixes, they expect support if something goes wrong.

As to whether this attitude is correct does not matter, there are enough people who will expect such a service that resources will have to be put towards dealing with the old versions or Squad will get much negative online attention.

Personally if I were Squad I would not release previous versions because I have seen the response they get from doing pretty much anything these days.

As a community we really should stop being so upset about things because at some point Squad are going to go "You know what? Let`s just take this pile of money and sit on a beach instead of updating a game when we get no positive feedback from doing it"

You never know, if the community had been more nice in the past maybe they would be more open to taking a risk and releasing old versions...

Well I will wholeheartedly agree that it's better they spend time developing new versions than supporting old ones, so if that is the choice then oh well, old versions aren't worth slowed development. Maybe I'm naive, but I like to think the community will understand the old versions aren't supported, but again I still remember those old days of zero updates or support post launch

[rodrigoelp]

I agree with @John FX, as a software developer there is nothing more frustrating than having complete segregation of your product and having to support a range of versions just for the sake of a small community. In this respect I think OSX (or Apple) has done it right, they basically move on to the next version introducing or changing features without having to bother for legacy. Your response time is increased so much as you may choose to move to a different engine or fix different bugs without having to think about all the previous versions and how to fix it. This is specially meaningful when you are tracking a bug as you don't need to replicate it on any other version (just the current) and fix it there.

[Noob21]

I have a feeling that the only people that would use the older versions are the ones bright enough to understand that they'll be dealing with bugs but that there's always just newer versions without said bugs. Squad shouldn't have to add anything other than a possible readme that informs people that there will be no technical support for the version that they're using and that everything that happens is on their shoulders. I mean hell, I was just playing 0.17 yesterday and a kraken glitch corrupted one of my saves. I'm not mad. And I'm especially not going to whine to Squad and the moderators for support. Squad should allow people to own the old versions just so we have the option and don't have to do borderline illegal stuff to get our hands on it, if there's even the version we're looking for is floating around. Plus it shouldn't take much more than $100 at most for hosting, and Squad makes probably tens of thousands a week so that isn't even a nick in their budget.

[Red Iron Crown]

28 minutes ago, Noob21 said:

I have a feeling that the only people that would use the older versions are the ones bright enough to understand that they'll be dealing with bugs but that there's always just newer versions without said bugs. Squad shouldn't have to add anything other than a possible readme that informs people that there will be no technical support for the version that they're using and that everything that happens is on their shoulders. I mean hell, I was just playing 0.17 yesterday and a kraken glitch corrupted one of my saves. I'm not mad. And I'm especially not going to whine to Squad and the moderators for support. Squad should allow people to own the old versions just so we have the option and don't have to do borderline illegal stuff to get our hands on it, if there's even the version we're looking for is floating around. Plus it shouldn't take much more than $100 at most for hosting, and Squad makes probably tens of thousands a week so that isn't even a nick in their budget.

1. Your "feeling" is incorrect. Once it's up on the site or Steam or wherever it becomes an officially distributed version again, and some people *will* report bugs with it, attempt to use mods on it, etc. While I'm sure you personally wouldn't, there will always, always be users that don't read anything and do whine when it doesn't work well.

2. That "borderline illegal stuff" is copyright infringement and should not be mentioned on the forum again, per Rule 2.2f of our Community Guidelines.

3. Numbers pulled from thin air are not convincing. We don't know what Squad's budget is like, nor do we know the cost of hosting because we don't know how much traffic it would create.

[Noob21]

On April 16, 2016 at 8:02 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

2. That "borderline illegal stuff" is copyright infringement and should not be mentioned on the forum again, per Rule 2.2f of our Community Guidelines.

It's only borderline illegal because Squad doesn't give us any other option. Not my fault I have to do that stuff to get my hands on something I technically deserve for paying for it.

[Guest]

On April 17, 2016 at 4:19 AM, Noob21 said:

It's only borderline illegal because Squad doesn't give us any other option. Not my fault I have to do that stuff to get my hands on something I technically deserve for paying for it.

Well, technically you have payed for whatever version was out when you bought it, and updates after that.  Just because someone buys Fallout 4 doesn't mean they also have Fallout 3, etc.  (I know, they're technically different games, etc.)