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Kerbal Space Program Breaks Ground with a New DLC!


UomoCapra

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Just now, Nigel Cardozo said:

Many members have rejected the new planet terrain in a DLC. It could be implemented in the stock game. 

I agree, it should be implemented partially in the stock game but without the added features. 

Simply classify it as an "easter egg" for the stock game, but without the DLC features, it's no more useful than the UFO at Kerbin's pole.

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Just now, Ruedii said:

I agree, it should be implemented partially in the stock game but without the added features. 

Simply classify it as an "easter egg" for the stock game, but without the DLC features, it's no more useful than the UFO at Kerbin's pole.

Exactly

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13 minutes ago, scottadges said:

It really seems like there's a lot in this DLC, but I'm wondering at the price of $14.99. With the base game for net new players going for $39.99, I would expect this to be a TON of stuff for a DLC that costs almost half the base game.

Sure.  Robotics alone is an incredibly complicated feature to develop, and is something I've wanted in stock KSP since forever, and (for me at least) qualifies as "ton of stuff".

I view it in terms of dollars per hour of entertainment.  The cost of KSP is essentially zero.  I only spent US$27 on it myself, given when I purchased it.  But given all the literally thousands of hours I've put into it, even if it had cost $40, I still would have paid only maybe a couple of pennies per hour.  There's certainly no other commercial entertainment product I've ever gotten that kind of value out of.

It all boils down to voting with your wallet.  If you think the new thing's worth $15, then you plunk down the ol' doubloons.  (I know I sure will.)  If you don't, then you keep 'em in the ol' oak chest.  I think it's pretty clear from most of the responses here that a large majority of the forums, at least, seem to be in the "shut up and take my money" contingent, which tells me that Squad appears to have gauged things fairly reasonably.

19 minutes ago, scottadges said:

Otherwise, it's a pretty blatant "monetization strategy" to get as much money as possible

Well, of course.  That's what every commercial enterprise ever is all about.  If you're employed and bringing home a paycheck, that's what's buying your groceries and paying your rent / mortgage / whatever.  It's how the market economy works.

20 minutes ago, scottadges said:

(which OK yes, game developers need to make money)

Right.  That answers your question right there.  They can't make stuff for free.  Devs gotta eat.  It costs money to develop things-- they gotta charge $$$ just to cover the expenses, let alone turning a profit (which after all is the point of the exercise).

There's not really any "but" after this sentence.

After all... the stock KSP game is a bit long in the tooth now.  They've been selling it since 2011, which is an extraordinarily long time for a computer game to stay current.  Not only that, but this is kind of a "niche" game that appeals mainly to a particular subspecies of nerd-- Squad doesn't announce their sales numbers, but I can't imagine that KSP comes within even an order of magnitude of how many copies the latest Blizzard or EA flagship product's gonna sell.

I mean... how much of a cash stream do you expect they're making off the stock game anymore?  I can't imagine it's all that big.  The total player base can't be all that huge, and I wouldn't be surprised if the large majority of people who are ever gonna play KSP have already purchased it years ago, which means zero revenue stream from those people since Squad has the policy of offering updates for free.

So the only way they have of making money (and paying the bills) is to charge for new DLC stuff.  Do you like new kerbal stuff?  I do.  I'd like to see them continue to release new kerbal stuff for a good long time to come.  Which means they gotta charge money, and they gotta charge enough money to make the enterprise commercially worthwhile.  They're not running a charity.

25 minutes ago, scottadges said:

But they know that this very active community will almost certainly purchase it, so they can price it however high they want regardless of total in-game value of the content.

Nonsense.  If they charged $100 for this, how many people do you think would buy it?  If they released some very low-value content (e.g. "new textures pack!" with nothing else), how much demand do you think there would be?

People are going to spend money on what they value.  If you wanna make the big bucks, you gotta deliver something that people slobber over and really really want.  "Stock robotics" is certainly in that category for me, and (judging from most of the reactions here) seems to be a pretty big deal for a lot of the player base, too.  So this seems to me like a reasonable venture on Squad's part.

27 minutes ago, scottadges said:

Offering expensive DLC isn't necessarily a bad thing in terms of capitalism, but they need to weigh how much they're putting in for the price they're asking, is all I'm saying.

Of course.  And I think it's safe to assume that they did, because any company that doesn't do that is egregiously incompetent at commerce and will go out of business pretty quick.  Every reasonably competent company does that:  "what's the demand for our product, and what can we charge for it."  Since I have seen no evidence to indicate that they don't know their business-- after all, they must be reasonably commercially successful or they wouldn't still be shipping new kerbal stuff 8 years later-- I think it's safe to assume that they're doing exactly that.

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50 minutes ago, Maxsimal said:

To answer a few questions that have been popping up here:

1. Yes, you'll be able to make mods to add more robotics parts with the core functionality that's being released with the DLC - but anyone who wants to use those parts will need the DLC of course.

2. There are different sizes & shapes of the robotics parts.

5.  I hope you'll be pleased with what we're going to deliver for the robotics control mechanisms.  We've got several features, that are still not revealed and I'm not sure how much I can say about them, that will help you control regular & robotic craft in ways that make the feature even more than it already sounds like.

I am really curious how all of this will look and work :D. Have you taken any inspiration from the existing robotics mods out there? May be tempted to adapt the IR Rework parts to support it if the right functionality is there.

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44 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

Finally a step in the right direction in regards to making planets more interesting. But if we have to pay for this? No.

So your theory is that they should spend a bunch of money to develop major new features, and charge nothing for it?

That's an interesting business model you have in mind there.  How do you propose that they make it work?  Would love to hear the economic theory behind this.  :)

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42 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

Finally a step in the right direction in regards to making planets more interesting. But if we have to pay for this? No. This is desperately needed in the base game because the planets are incredibly bland as they are and need serious attention.

Oh come on, you know a lesser developer would call this KSP 2 (or worse, KSP 2019) and charge $60 for it.

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3 minutes ago, Snark said:

So your theory is that they should spend a bunch of money to develop major new features, and charge nothing for it?

That's an interesting business model you have in mind there.  How do you propose that they make it work?  Would love to hear the economic theory behind this.  :)

No, I said in the line below that the models should be in the stock game and the functionality should be in the DLC, which is actually a good business strategy. Giving people new things, and saying they can do more with them if they pay a little bit on top of the base game. Seems perfectly fair to me! It's a common business practice.

Like a data plan! Charge for a base plan, charge a bit more for a little bit on top, and people might be more inclined to buy it if they like the service they were originally receiving.

 

And hey, if Squad wanted to, they could have the collisions disabled on the cool new terrain scatters and put that in the DLC too. I'd be happy with that, but the planets are so incredibly bare and boring in the stock game that they should be included in the base game.

Edited by Gameslinx
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Just now, Gameslinx said:

No, I said in the line below that the models should be in the stock game and the functionality should be in the DLC, which is actually a good business strategy. Giving people new things, and saying they can do more with them if they pay a little bit on top of the base game. Seems perfectly fair to me!

Seems fair to me too

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16 minutes ago, ShadowZone said:

All in all a total of 60 USD for a game that already gave me thousands of hours of fun. Triple A titles ask for the same amount of money for a hammy single player campaign and a derivative multiplayer part I am not interested in.

 

I paid $63.75USD for Fallout76 on launch day and got maybe 20 hours out of it tops.  KSP I bought for $12 and am well past 2,000 hours. I feel I almost owe they more money.

Besides, Take Two Interactive owns all things Kerbal now, and in order to get a KSP 2 someday, we need to all be good little recurrent spenders!

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4 minutes ago, DMagic said:

This doesn't make too much sense to me. If someone really cares about more terrain scatters and things to do with them, then they will probably buy the DLC. 

Hmm, in my understanding, the terrain scatters will just be 'something to see/discover' that's why I agreed that they should be in the base game. They'll just  be like new anomalies, hence I referred to them as such. I mean sure there are already anomalies on the planets, but I think more would be good.

7 minutes ago, Maxsimal said:

That portion of the feature will actually be included in the free portion of the DLC release.  But it will be hidden because only the DLC functionality uses it.  Modders can use it though, and it will be visible in the base game once modders add their own parts that use it.

This is so awesome to hear! Thanks! Maybe I should just mention @IgorZ here XD

9 minutes ago, Maxsimal said:

However, for a wide variety of reasons, legal, logistical, etc (IANAL but this is pretty obvious) nothing Squad does can depend on the existence of a player-built mod.   We can release stuff that you guys can then make compatible with your own mods, but not vice versa.  

I actually didn't know this, but since @CobaltWolf mentioned that SEP was discontinued, I think it won't be much of a problem.

And now that I think about it, I can have an explanation for why there are two versions of a functionality (e.g. IR and stock robotics). I could just say in my headcanon that IR was a third-party manufacturer software (which means that it works on third party parts) and that the stock robotics are KSC developed software. All is well :)

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19 minutes ago, MiscelanousItem said:

I can't stress how much I agree with @Gameslinx ,if the terrain scatterers are not in the stock game  I won't buy the DLC, and I think that many community members agree. So @SQUAD , think about it!

...Um, I'm confused.

If the feature you really want is the terrain scatterers, and if they put that in the stock game for free, then that would give you less reason to buy the DLC, not more.  You're saying you would buy the DLC if they put less in it?  That's... not how product sales work, in my experience.  It's certainly not how most customers behave.  In general, customers pay more money if something has more stuff in it.

Taking more stuff out of the DLC and putting it for free into the stock game would reduce people's reason to buy it, and would result in lower sales; therefore, it would be pretty foolish of them to do that.  So why would they?

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1 minute ago, Snark said:

Taking more stuff out of the DLC and putting it for free into the stock game would reduce people's reason to buy it, and would result in lower sales; therefore, it would be pretty foolish of them to do that.  So why would they?

 

Because the way its being suggested would incentivize the player recurrent spender to want more out of those new terrain scatters than just looking at them.

Player: "Boy, these new surface features are so cool looking, I wish I could deploy a thingamabob and run doohickey tests on them!"

Private Division:  "We have just the thing for you!"

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@Snark , the surface of planets in KSP is boring, we can agree on that right?

So if we have more anomalies on them, they will be more interesting, right?

Also it works a bit like a appetizer you give people a bit of your product, so they come back to buy the whole thing!(demos work like that to)

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1 minute ago, klesh said:

 

Because the way its being suggested would incentivize the player recurrent spender to want more out of those new terrain scatters than just looking at them.

Player: "Boy, these new surface features are so cool looking, I wish I could deploy a thingamabob and run doohickey tests on them!"

Private Division:  "We have just the thing for you!"

This is exactly my point! Thank you.

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R2UiWur.jpg

Anyone recognize the middle leg parts on the left-side scorpion-ish craft?  Top is a standard 0.625m liquid fuel tank, bottom is a standard adapter, middle is a ...?

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3 minutes ago, klesh said:

 

Because the way its being suggested would incentivize the player recurrent spender to want more out of those new terrain scatters than just looking at them.

Player: "Boy, these new surface features are so cool looking, I wish I could deploy a thingamabob and run doohickey tests on them!"

Private Division:  "We have just the thing for you!"

Oh yeah, that could work too haha. I didn't think about that, but it seems to be a good in-game advertisement too.

1 minute ago, fourfa said:

Anyone recognize the middle leg parts on the left-side scorpion-ish craft?  Top is a standard 0.625m liquid fuel tank, bottom is a standard adapter, middle is a ...?

I think that's going to be one of the new stock robotic part. It looks like a hydraulic piston to me.

Edited by johnkeale
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Well it looks like my break from KSP the past several weeks is going to be coming to a rapid end. :sticktongue:  Question, If I throw a Kerbal into that "cryo-volcano on Vall" that you all mentioned, will he be ejected into a suborbital trajectory? :D

And with those hinges and rotating joints, looks like stock props, helicopters and tilt-rotors might finally become a thing.  Oh man...the possibilities.

And it comes out in 24 days?! WHAT?! :o

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1 minute ago, fourfa said:

Anyone recognize the middle leg parts on the left-side scorpion-ish craft?  Top is a standard 0.625m liquid fuel tank, bottom is a standard adapter, middle is a ...?

Probably one of the robotic parts. Looks like a hydraulic piston of some sort.

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1 minute ago, Raptor9 said:

f I throw a Kerbal into that "cryo-volcano on Vall" that you all mentioned, will he be ejected into a suborbital trajectory?

Only one way to find out! ;)

2 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

And with those hinges and rotating joints, looks like stock props, helicopters and tilt-rotors might finally become a thing.  Oh man...the possibilities.

Yeah! When I installed IR, it opened a 'whole new world' of building for me. Same reason why I haven't installed kOS yet, because I will be drowned with all the new possibilities. Man I can't really wait for this DLC to come out XD

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