KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[razark]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

...they are in single-player gameplay during deep-space travel. Multiplayer would be available only after arriving and syncing to the server controlled area around the celestial body.

But when they are not orbiting a planet or moon, they are still orbiting the central star of the system.  Nothing says that two players can't rendezvous and build a station in stellar orbit.

 

3 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

There is no way I am going to do the matt lowne no timewarp mission because a few people would rather have a kerbal run a circle around kerbin.

Why would you play with those people in the first place?

[Rutabaga22]

Just now, razark said:

Why would you play with those people in the first place?

My point is that I don't want to have to deal with people doing other things while I do my mission in multiplayer.

[razark]

3 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

I don't want to have to deal with people

3 minutes ago, Rutabaga22 said:

multiplayer

I have to admit my question is not answered, and I remain confused.

Why play with other people if you don't want to play with other people?

[Rutabaga22]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

I have to admit my question is not answered, and I remain confused.

Why play with other people if you don't want to play with other people?

What I mean is when I am not doing ISS missions with my friends, but e are still playing together they might be flying planes, but I might be working on launching the first module of our mun base.

[Catto]

Pros about multiplayer for me:

-I get to play with my dad!

Cons about multiplayer for me:

-I'm going to have to teach my dad. How to play. Might be a bit complicated

[darthgently]

The way I'm imagining integrating MP is that I will likely always have an on going single mode game or two that I mess with when schedules don't line up, and maybe one of two organized "game nights" every few weeks in completely different saves.   I simply won't focus as much on big personal projects in MP games, but instead probably do more cooperative base building, rover racing, various challenges that involve everyone mostly in the same scene kind of thing.  I imagine a lot of dares and challenges, "let's race around Mun as close to the surface as possible, the first to land on the arch wins". 

It will be the difference between spending a rainy day as a kid enjoyably working on a solo project in the garage and hanging out in the woods with friends on BMX bikes daring each other to try crazy stunts.  Completely different,  both fun.

Edited October 14, 2022 by darthgently

[Deadmeat24]

There is no way that this game ends up as an MMO. Especially with the main method suggested here. That essentially makes it single player with the ability to watch other people and extra steps. I would rather play with just my friends and actually be able to easily interact with them. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Deadmeat24

[Pthigrivi]

49 minutes ago, Catto said:

-I'm going to have to teach my dad. How to play. Might be a bit complicated

Teaching people to play sounds like THE most fun part of this for me. But yeah... dad? Hmmm haha
 

39 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I simply won't focus as much on big personal projects in MP games, but instead probably do more cooperative base building, rover racing, various challenges that involve everyone mostly in the same scene kind of thing.  I imagine a lot of dares and challenges, "let's race around Mun as close to the surface as possible, the first to land on the arch wins". 

This does sound like fun, but what you need is a system that both allows this and allows multiple players to collaborate on colonies and stations throughout the Kerbol system and beyond. If you've got a system where you can't timewarp the game is unplayable, period. If you've you've got a system where players all time-warp together you don't actually have multiplayer, you have turn-based KSP. Players aren't playing together, they're waiting while other players play, possibly for hours. Both make collaborative play agonizing. If however you have a system where players can either play at their own pace or synch, then both kinds of play are possible, and you have some prayer of players expanding beyond Kerbin, building bases on Duna, working together on an interstellar vessel above Laythe and racing rovers on Vall. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

8 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Teaching people to play sounds like THE most fun part of this for me. But yeah... dad? Hmmm haha
 

This does sound like fun, but what you need is a system that both allows this and allows multiple players to collaborate on colonies and stations throughout the Kerbol system and beyond. If you've got a system where you can't timewarp the game is unplayable, period. If you've you've got a system where players all time-warp together you don't actually have multiplayer, you have turn-based KSP. Players aren't playing together, they're waiting while other players play, possibly for hours. Both make collaborative play agonizing. If however you have a system where players can either play at their own pace or synch, then both kinds of play are possible, and you have some prayer of players expanding beyond Kerbin, building bases on Duna, working together on an interstellar vessel above laythe and racing rovers on Vall. 

Yeah, no.  The solution for me is to simply keep the two styles separate in my life.  When playing MP I'm not going to go off by myself to build a sand castle.  I might have a base or colony in meetup biweekly save, but it will not be a focus for me.  Now if I can import my meticulous base from single player into an MP universe, that could be cool, but it would just be a "read only" copy for showing off, not for working on there.  For the same reason I wouldn't break out my stamp collection at a party, and definitely wouldn't start working on it there

Edited October 14, 2022 by darthgently

[Pthigrivi]

4 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Yeah, no.  The solution for me is to simply keep the two styles separate in my life.  When playing MP I'm not going to go off by myself to build a sand castle.  I might have a base or colony in meetup biweekly save, but it will not be a focus for me.  Now if I can import my meticulous base from single player into an MP universe, that could be cool, but it would just be a "read only" copy for showing off, not for working on there

That's fine! But I'm not talking about working on your own sandcastle. I'm talking about multiple people delivering modules to the same place and pooling resources to make something together. Some systems make this practically impossible and others don't, and the latter systems also don't prevent the kinds of things you're talking about. 

[darthgently]

21 minutes ago, Deadmeat24 said:

There is no way that this game ends up as an MMO. Especially with the main method suggested here. That essentially makes it single player with the ability to watch other people and extra steps. I would rather play with just my friends and actually be able to easily interact with them. 

This.  Even if MMO were possible and available I think most would end up in organized small groups on "game nights" like D&D gaming.  Maybe I'm just be being nostalgic, but I don't think I'm wrong in perceiving that more and more people are getting weary of the big crowd scenes online and may be looking forward to more organized and smaller meetups.  More Minecraftish perhaps

[Guest]

5 hours ago, darthgently said:

This.  Even if MMO were possible and available I think most would end up in organized small groups on "game nights" like D&D gaming.  Maybe I'm just be being nostalgic, but I don't think I'm wrong in perceiving that more and more people are getting weary of the big crowd scenes online and may be looking forward to more organized and smaller meetups.  More Minecraftish perhaps

2 or 3 people, building a ISS replica together, same inclined orbit of the IRL ISS.

No MMO, no player being on Laythe flying a floatplane while the other is building a Duna colony. But 2 players building togeter the ISS.

That's all you need to start seeing problems if you don't have a system that allows for time warp.

[Vl3d]

50 pages of discussions and people still can't accept that you can just let the server control the common time speed limit for multiplayer and if you want to warp on-rails you automatically go into single player (or on-board team) mode.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Vl3d

[Vl3d]

9 hours ago, Forked Camphor said:

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

KSP2 WILL BE MULTIPLAYER AT ITS CORE

What? Confirmed by the devs?

Considering that colored kerbal teams are actually in the announcement trailer, I would say yes, it's been confirmed by the devs.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Considering that colored kerbal teams are actually in the announcement trailer, I would say yes, it's been confirmed by the devs.

No, it's not confirmed by anyone.

Stop extrapolating whatever you want from random bits of info.

There are no hints, no things to be read between the lines, no confirmations, no knowledge, no promises and no info whatsoever on KSP being an MMO or Multiplayer-first game.

Intercept isn't nearly big enough to build something like that, they don't have the right kind of developers to develop such a game, the genre of the game is terrible for that kind of game and the devs talked about a gameplay similar to KSP1 every time they talked about gameplay.

Nothing point towards that and you should really stop setting yourself up for disappointment.

What you're calling "colored teams" is actually just a system to individually color and change textures for parts, they mentioned that can be useful in multiplayer to make each player more distinct but they never talked about automated teams systems to do so.

 

34 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

50 pages of discussions and people still can't accept that you can just let the server control the common time speed limit for multiplayer and if you want to warp on-rails you automatically go into single player (or on-board team) mode.

50 pages of people not understanding that their "special solution" is not so special at all.

In case of yours it still fails the "Let's build the ISS together" requirement.

[Rudolf Meier]

I think, the Multiplayer idea (in the form it is discussed here) should be dropped. I cannot imagine that you can do a lot of funny stuff in such a world (except the childish destruction of vehicles and stuff like that... but is that really "playing the game"?). This would only add frustration to the game and it binds developer resources. KSP2 isn't released and if they continue to shift it back it won't be released ever.

But... here's my idea what I think could work. Use Multiplayer only for short periods of time during flights. One player is the "Master" and he controls the game, while others are just joining the game during flights and controlling Kerbals assigned to them. This would allow you to do EVAs in Multiplayer mode while the game itself is not real Multiplayer... maybe just "Multiviewer". ... or, maybe you can move the "Master" role from one player to another. This idea would also work inside the VAB for example. But in this case everyone will be in the VAB at the same time. So... Multiplayer would be some sort of Singleplayer but controlled by multiple computers.

That's a scenario of which I think it could work. But, sure... it would be more a "work together" than a "compete with each other".

[Vl3d]

31 minutes ago, Master39 said:

There are no hints, no things to be read between the lines, no confirmations, no knowledge, no promises and no info whatsoever on KSP being an MMO or Multiplayer-first game.

@Nate Simpson

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Rudolf Meier said:

I think, the Multiplayer idea (in the form it is discussed here) should be dropped. I cannot imagine that you can do a lot of funny stuff in such a world (except the childish destruction of vehicles and stuff like that... but is that really "playing the game"?). This would only add frustration to the game and it binds developer resources. KSP2 isn't released and if they continue to shift it back it won't be released ever.

Which one? There are like a couple of proposal for page for all the 50 pages.

 

38 minutes ago, Rudolf Meier said:

But... here's my idea what I think could work. Use Multiplayer only for short periods of time during flights. One player is the "Master" and he controls the game, while others are just joining the game during flights and controlling Kerbals assigned to them. This would allow you to do EVAs in Multiplayer mode while the game itself is not real Multiplayer... maybe just "Multiviewer". ... or, maybe you can move the "Master" role from one player to another. This idea would also work inside the VAB for example. But in this case everyone will be in the VAB at the same time. So... Multiplayer would be some sort of Singleplayer but controlled by multiple computers.

That's a scenario of which I think it could work. But, sure... it would be more a "work together" than a "compete with each other".

That's not even considerable Multiplayer. 

I'm going to file this under "people that actually hate multiplayer games and are just proposing the thing using the least possible amount of dev time to implement".

 

39 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

@Nate Simpson

What that is even supposed to mean?

Whatever they will reveal in the future it doesn't change that you're basing your theories on nothing right now.

 

Even if they come out with an MMO after all (which is impossible) you wouldn't be right, with 50 pages and dozen of proposals is almost certain that someone has guessed right. But that's it, it's a guess, and a blind one at that.

Because there's no information you can extrapolate from what we know for sure.

[Rudolf Meier]

5 minutes ago, Master39 said:

That's not even considerable Multiplayer. 

...

Even if they come out with an MMO after all (which is impossible) ...

Really? ... so, why don't we first talk about the definition of "Multiplayer" then?

6 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I'm going to file this under "people that actually hate multiplayer games and are just proposing the thing using the least possible amount of dev time to implement".

yeah... I'm not sure if I should react to this one... but... could also be "people who work on mutli-user-software and who know exactly what the problems are and what he possible solutions are and what the potential possibilities are"?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Rudolf Meier said:

Really? ... so, why don't we first talk about the definition of "Multiplayer" then?

Not going to start an argument over semantics.

To make a comparable example it's like when they put a single specifically designed VR mission into a flat game and they call it a "VR Game". Technically it is, true, but is that really what you want when you buy a new VR game? A game that's 95% flat and then has a separate VR mode with a single dedicated 15 minutes "experience"?

Same goes with Multiplayer here, if I can't play the full game in multiplayer then it's not a multiplayer game, just a studio doing the bare minimum necessary to be allowed to tag their game as "multiplayer" in the stores.

 

12 minutes ago, Rudolf Meier said:

yeah... I'm not sure if I should react to this one... but... could also be "people who work on mutli-user-software and who know exactly what the problems are and what he possible solutions are and what the potential possibilities are"?

Anyone working on any multi-user asynchronous anything would know that these things are quite more difficult to explain that they are to implement and use.

For most of the proposals you can see around here the final player would only see a button or two to "timewarp to another player" and maybe a couple of limitations or extreme use cases that can break down things.

 

There are many ways to break the psychics of the game or make impossible things using the offset tools or making parts interact witch each other in unintended ways (Kraken drives?), and yet I never saw anyone saying that that makes the Lego-style building an impossible thing, or proposing to abandon it because it will ultimately end up in bugs and problems.

Player just learn the limits of the system they're using and adapt to them, limiting multiplayer to a few controlled scenarios just because you're scared of a few edge cases doesn't make sense.

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Even if they come out with an MMO after all (which is impossible) you wouldn't be right, with 50 pages and dozen of proposals is almost certain that someone has guessed right. But that's it, it's a guess, and a blind one at that.

I don't care about being right. I care about the Game That Was Promised, the game KSP1 was supposed to be: a persistent world team-based and competitive big multiplayer game.

[Rudolf Meier]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Player just learn the limits of the system they're using and adapt to them, limiting multiplayer to a few controlled scenarios just because you're scared of a few edge cases doesn't make sense.

See... the problem is not the game... it's the people. You cannot play a game over a longer period of time. Most of them will quit over time or never show up... stuff like that. And this leads to two different things: 1) people will have bad experiences in the game and those bad experiences will then be linked to the game itself and... bad feelings associated with this game cannot be what we want... 2) games will start to become shorter and shorter and the game itself would move away from what it is towards something that you play for an hour and then leave it... which will destroy the game over time ... those are my main concerns... and having a way to join a mission and then leave the game again (like being a mission specialist on an STS flight)... is my solution for those psychological problems (not the technical problems)

[pandaman]

13 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Paradigm shift and accept that KSP2 WILL BE MULTIPLAYER AT ITS CORE.

Hmm.  Personally I doubt it.  Integrated at release, yes absolutely.  Designed as a primarily MP game, no.

MMO ?  Can't even see that working at all.

13 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Why do you guys think they are testing race cars?!

Race cars are all in the same place at the same time.  No different to a co-op  with no time warp.

32 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I don't care about being right. I care about the Game That Was Promised, the game KSP1 was supposed to be: a persistent world team-based and competitive big multiplayer game.

Where was that 'promised' exactly? 

[Guest]

39 minutes ago, Rudolf Meier said:

See... the problem is not the game... it's the people. You cannot play a game over a longer period of time. Most of them will quit over time or never show up... stuff like that. And this leads to two different things: 1) people will have bad experiences in the game and those bad experiences will then be linked to the game itself and... bad feelings associated with this game cannot be what we want... 2) games will start to become shorter and shorter and the game itself would move away from what it is towards something that you play for an hour and then leave it... which will destroy the game over time ... those are my main concerns... and having a way to join a mission and then leave the game again (like being a mission specialist on an STS flight)... is my solution for those psychological problems (not the technical problems)

They aren't problems, I've played plenty of long games with co-op.

In my group of friends we routinely rotate a bunch of MP games, right now is Overwatch 2 and Sea of Thieves but before that we did a co-op run of Factorio (Krastorio mod pack) which is a very long game.

And before that (and a Deep Rock Galactic week) we did a full run or Stellaris, and keep in mind that in Stellaris you spend the first 2-7 hours without even seeing all the other players on the map, and even when you can it's not easy to directly interact.

 

The problem with your solution is not that it's not interesting, it's that it's not KSP gameplay, it's another multiplayer-only gameplay loop added to the game while the main experience still remains a Singleplayer only thing.

 

58 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I care about the Game That Was Promised, the game KSP1 was supposed to be: a persistent world team-based and competitive big multiplayer game.

Nobody promised you that, not even remotely, you're imagining things that never happened.

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

…with 50 pages and dozen of proposals is almost certain that someone has guessed right.

Its also possible that in 50 pages none of us has guessed exactly right, because we haven’t begun to grasp the real programming and logistical problems beyond the obvious. 
 

I think your ISS question is a good test. If players have to wait and then only launch every 3 hours while the orbital planes line up and then sit and wait for additional hours while they refine and catch up on approach then the multiplayer system isn’t really working. If instead you have voting or round-robin time warp privileges and you have 6 players, each of which takes 15-30 minutes to launch and then dock, then everyone else is twiddling their thumbs and doing their own thing for multiple hours waiting for their turn, and again you don’t really have a functioning multiplayer. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi