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Early Access for KSP2 ?


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On 3/1/2020 at 7:02 PM, Gydra54 said:

Nah, AT MOST a single early playable demo or something, but even that I don't really agree with. Let them develop the game and release it when ready. I don't care even if they have to delay to 2025, I am willing to wait for a proper game.

I miss the days when all games had playable demo's. Honestly, I really like the idea of a demo being released as a teaser.

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Early access is not for everyone else's convenience to play a game. Early access is for a new game concept to be tested and give feedback to better develop a game. The developers know exactly that needs to be done, the rest will be covered by the modding community. Tell me another game that's under development where the average game time spent on the prequel is over 2,000 hours. Be patient, just like most highly anticipated sequels, they have only one shot to get this right at release. If they don't do enough of a good job, they will lose years of development and mad respect. Look at Just Cause 4, it wasn't even that hyped of a sequel, but I guarantee most people who play it will think twice before buying an Avalanche Studio game.

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Early Access made sense for KSP1, because the devs were working on next to no budget and needed the exposure.

 

KSP2 clearly doesn't need Early Access. It has exposure, it's working along the lines of the original game in how they're creating it, and it has a large budget by the looks of it, too. (Well for a space sim game)

Let the devs release it when they feel its ready, instead of the hassle and mess of involving lots of players who will give mixed feedback regardless of what they do.

So nah, pass on said petitition.

Edited by Stevie_D
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On 3/1/2020 at 2:11 PM, Starman4308 said:

You are quite incorrect saying that we "all" want to play it soon. I'd personally rather wait and play a decently polished game.

They never said that they wanted it released soon. There's a difference between early access and release. Plus, won't early access increase the amount of people to spot bugs?

8 minutes ago, Stevie_D said:

KSP2 clearly doesn't need Early Access.

 

8 minutes ago, Stevie_D said:

Let the devs release it when they feel its ready

Same response for you, mate. There's a great difference between early access and release.

4 hours ago, savagekerbal said:

Early access is for a new game concept to be tested and give feedback to better develop a game.

Finally, someone understands what early access means, and understands its benefits! Can't believe I had to dig through the replies for this.

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And it doesn't matter how you define it - early access may or may not be release - the fact is, it doesnt need it is the argument you're avoiding.

It does not need playtesting by outsiders when they have their own people doing exactly that right now. People who are also far more reliable than the general public, i might add.

Edited by Stevie_D
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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

Plus, won't early access increase the amount of people to spot bugs?

Devs are too polite to say this, but IRL public betas are useless for bug hunting. Hardly anyone bothers to report them, and the ones that do, report such bad quality bugs that it takes way too long to figure out what they actually mean. All this ties up resources that could have been used for more effective bug-hunting and bugfixing.

EA and public betas can work to validate a concept, but they're worse than useless for QA.

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Actually, that depends on the game. ArmA3 is quite a success story in that regard. In its case, it had a very dedicated, mature community, being a long-running military simulator on the hardcore end of the scale, and a need for large scale multiplayer testing, something that would require a disproportionate number of people. A3 servers can have 100+ players on at the same time, setting such a thing up with qualified QA testers would break the bank for sure. Its "development branch" was actually a long-running project with daily updates (up until development started winding down), for both trying out gameplay ideas and bughunting. I myself had a hand in nailing a few bugs to the wall, some things were literally fixed overnight.

Of course, KSP community is different in that regard. The ones in "hardcore simulation" demographic could likely be worked with, but kids are unlikely to be of much help (well, I've been a milsimmer and a Falcon 4 pilot since high school, but that's rare) and "lolsokerbal" demographic is as likely as not to complain about devs fixing the bugs, as it often happened in the past. A modder-only preview could work (but only if it's a bit more inclusive than things like publicity releases to YouTubers), but would be likely controversial.

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23 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

They never said that they wanted it released soon. There's a difference between early access and release. Plus, won't early access increase the amount of people to spot bugs?

 

Finally, someone understands what early access means, and understands its benefits! Can't believe I had to dig through the replies for this.

Let's just cut straight to the point; KSP2 will have bugs upon release regardless of how they decide to move forward.

KSP2 is also not a novel, new concept or a different take or twist on a established genre being made by a independent studio. 

KSP2 doesn't need EA for security, as they have the backing of the publisher. KSP2 doesn't need EA for bug fixes either; those reports will come to them regardless. 

The only reason KSP2 would consider EA is greed at this point; plain and simple.

 

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30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Devs are too polite to say this, but IRL public betas are useless for bug hunting. Hardly anyone bothers to report them, and the ones that do, report such bad quality bugs that it takes way too long to figure out what they actually mean. All this ties up resources that could have been used for more effective bug-hunting and bugfixing.

Citation needed

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43 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Citation needed

Personal experience. I've been involved with several betas (public and private) on both sides of the fence, as a developer and as a tester, of games and of other products.

The only way public betas can be useful for QA is if the product has good telemetry, i.e. it reports what the users are doing without user intervention. So for example if you're testing a RPG and you want to balance it, you can send out a public beta and then collect data on how often players die with each character class, how many times they reload boss battles, and so on, and then use this data to balance the game. 

I'm not sure what kind of telemetry you could usefully collect on KSP. Most of the bugs in KSP1 aren't the kind that could be readily identified automatically -- part symmetry, surface interactions, and so on.

Human testing requires a certain amount of skill. Most people couldn't write up a useful bug report even with the best of intentions. Public betas have few sufficiently competent users in them, so the occasional useful report gets lost in the noise -- if, that is, people bother to report them at all. Game betas are especially bad because participants aren't usually all that motivated to report bugs, they just want to play the game.

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21 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

They never said that they wanted it released soon. There's a difference between early access and release. Plus, won't early access increase the amount of people to spot bugs?

 

Same response for you, mate. There's a great difference between early access and release.

Finally, someone understands what early access means, and understands its benefits! Can't believe I had to dig through the replies for this.

There's a difference between EA and release, but in the minds of the consumer, far less than there should be. Real EA processes fall well short of the idealized picture of EA, as developers are forced into an early cycle of addressing user feedback promptly, which can lead to things like bandaged-over code instead of taking the time to fix the root issues.

The sort of title that really benefits from EA are those with a particularly novel concept (e.g. the first KSP) and those which outright lack the funding to make it through development and need a cash injection regardless of what it does to development.

In the case of KSP 2, the primary positives of EA are meaningless (the devs have money and a clear idea of what they're doing), leaving just the downsides of EA (being prematurely forced into regular feedback loops and sifting through the noise of community feedback to find precious little signal).

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  • 7 months later...

I personally would not mind paying full price for a not-yet-finished-product, I mean as long as it does get finished at some point I'd be perfectly happy :D!

does anyone know is there will be an early access or an alpha :huh:? (on pc atleast)

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Probably not...there’s just too many surprises   (and secrets!) that the Devs have in store. They wouldn’t want to take the risk of the game’s features being leaked. While an early access would be AMAZING it’s probably not going to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, it really would be wonderful to see this! But you know...just got to ride the hype train for now!

Cheers!

-Lewie

Edited by Lewie
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22 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

A great way to build hype would be to let Jacksepticeue play it early

To be honest, I’d love to see that! He does have a forum account, believe it or not ( @jacksepticeye) but he hasn’t been around for a loooong time.

Imagine the things he’d do with an orion drive....

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2 hours ago, Lewie said:
3 hours ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

A great way to build hype would be to let Jacksepticeue play it early

To be honest, I’d love to see that! He does have a forum account, believe it or not ( @jacksepticeye) but he hasn’t been around for a loooong time.

Imagine the things he’d do with an orion drive....

All they did was thank Squad for featuring a video and then they never came back, I doubt it isn't an impostor account.

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On 2/25/2020 at 5:13 PM, kspnerd122 said:

I feel they should just SCREW CONSOLES and focus on the PC edition I DON'T CARE ABOUT CONSOLE PLAYERS we got so many garbage updates because"Console Players Cant get mods so everyone needs to get the features so the console players can get them.

MAKE IT PC ONLY at first ADD GOOD STUFF AND THEN Give it to console players

Yeah, screw money! let's make a niche game even more of a niche product, that'll show'em! screw consoles! screw expanding the market! screw the long term sustainability of the studio employers! Make a game just for me!

Now the main thread, I 100% support Early Access. For 3 reasons:
1º: Most of the people that will try EA already know what it implies. Kerbal is a very specific game that attracts mostly a very specific type of player. Now, obviously, I would make it a restricted EA, for instance, only for people that have 100+hours on KSP. That way you could avoid the "this game is a mess" press from new players.

2º: The length of time between the announcement and the new release date it's just too long. We've been waiting a lot now, even got some snippets of gameplay. 2021 was ok, but 2022 it's just too much. We need something in between.

3º: This is a game that could benefit from players testing the game. Because this is a game that encourages players to test the limits stuff. And we've all seen the crazy amount of ideas people make on KSP, there's no closed studio testing that could prepare them for what's coming.

Edited by Sesshaku
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are u flaming me about that, Im not saying don't release on consoles, but console release should come several months after the PC release(because on PC it is easier to debug because of logs), Also Im not saying not to support them just to make sure they have a working product on PC where debug is easier, then port it to consoles, also, if you want to support mods, make console players ACTUALLY ABLE TO USE MODS, also, if you can afford a console, you can afford a PC, and PC has the benefit of having a modding community who knows a huge amount about how the game works, they say they are building with modders in mind, then make it so ANYONE can maka a mod of decent quality

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  • 2 months later...

In my opinion, an early access release would be good an would not ruin the development. It reduces the waiting time for overhyped people (like me :P), generate money so that development can go on and Modders could begin their job. ^^

Or maybe a pre order beta. 

Those people who don't want to play it unfinished, are not forced to to that. (other opinions are cool anyway XD ) 

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