Why does everyone think KSP is not going well.

[Lord Aurelius]

I've been playing since 0.19 and there have always been a few people proclaiming doom and gloom for KSP, it seems to come with the territory of an early access/ongoing development game with an active forum community.

As has been mentioned, right now is actually a pretty quiet time in the forums. Around the 1.0 release was significantly more lively.

I definitely still have my own concerns regarding many of the decisions of Squad and the devs, but in the big picture the game is still fun to play and is still doing fine (although most of the game assets and part balance hasn't been touched at all since I started playing and really needs to be polished up...), and mod support is still going strong.

[wumpus]

20 hours ago, nascarlaser1 said:

Hi guys!

In recent months I've seen many threads talking about how either KSP is dead, or that KSP is not following the same path that the original dream was. Why is this? What was the "orginal" dream? If KSP was dead, why would they have released 1.2? I am not trying to start any rants, but since I've only joined KSP during 1.1.3, I am not sure why people have all these worries all of a sudden.

How do you determine if KSP is doing well?  Put a mirror over Jeb's mouth?

If there are no new [major] releases, is KSP dead?  Or is it "finished"?

If there is less forum chatter, is that because the game is too buggy to play?  Or are people procrastinating because of a really long upcoming flight.

Near as I can tell, the push to Unity 5 (and 64 bits and multiple threads) was the last big push the core engine needed.  Communications seems like details, and this might be why so many devs left.  Looks more complete than ended.  Of course, to listen to the fora, "finished" can only mean "dead", never "complete".

[mbartelsm]

I personally think of KSP as a game that has a huge potential that is left untapped. It's probably because there was never a clear image of what it was supposed to be when it was released.

Things like procedural construction, proper aerodynamics, dynamic realism that can be both fun and challenging, new in-game challenges, some much needed optimization, art consistency and aesthetics are things that the game should have but doesn't, because the game is a patchwork of features built on top of an unclear idea.

IMO the best thing Squad could do, if they plan to continue with the idea of KSP, is to finish debugging what is already released and start from scratch a new well defined game with a clear intention and clear goals.

[Wjolcz]

I don't hate KSP. It's an awesome game. The only thing I hate about it is the career mode. And the lack of info, but I can mod that in. Changing the way career works seems to be pretty hard though (I have to use several mods and it still makes me deal with science points).

[HoloYolo]

I personally do not think KSP is at it's highest peak. It's a great game, but I feel like it could be better.

Firstly, @NovaSilisko left the team, and with him, a great easter egg storyline. Why is this a problem? No more complicated easter eggs. The remnants are now scattered across the system with no meaning, except of a distant memory. My opinion on that.

Secondly, it feels like SQUAD just forgot about rocket parts. Planes have gotten loads of new parts recently, while I believe there have been only a few new rocket parts (Vector, Monoprop engine? More I don't know?). Might as well just call it Kerbal Space Plane Program. There is a clear gap with rockets, which has never been fixed.

Also, better career mode? Visual enhancements? Maybe a new planet, that is actually worth the journey? KSP is far from dying, but far from being what I would consider the best game ever.

[Sereneti]

i thing that KSP hast grown to Big..
To fast to Big...

Look; SQUAD is a marketing company.

and KSP has grown from a "i do something usefull/funny" thing to a realy, heavyweight game and simulation...

It has grown realy big.

a big Programming Project, maybe to big for a smal marketing company. - they havnt enough recources (know how, manpower) for that.

Yes they can increase the recources for that.
but what happened then?

I think KSP - to big for SQUAD, to small to sell

[wumpus]

I'm guessing you've never dealt with a passionate community dealing with a company that needs to produce a single product that appeases them all (especially when their real business need is new customers).  This is pretty mild, and cases like MMOs (which tend to nerf some factions and buff others) generate significant amounts of hatred on both sides.

One thing that might drive this perceived "dying" is a certain lack of overlap between the "TODO" list each player wants Squad to have and what their "real*" TODO list is.  From .18 to 1.1, that was pretty obvious: planets, more parts, maneuver nodes, more parts, career mode, more parts, fixed aero, more plane parts.  Any remaining things not implemented are likely either too hard to fit into the current code base and abandoned by players or considered too controversial (note that you can disable com nets) and will annoy a certain amount of the player base (see "things I won't do in KSP thread").  Or Squad might think that some things (like my pet peeve about ion engines needing to work in "rails mode") simply aren't worth doing (which if I saw the code I'd probably agree).  Back when Squad kept pumping out things that were on [nearly] everyone's TODO list (and promising others that were), things were presumably going well (but you still had ragequiting posts when real aerodynamics kept flipping previously working rockets).