The Grind

[BowlerHatGuy3]

Playing a lot of semi-realistic games recently, and I’ve been reminded of something. The Grind for a lot of realistic games (progression wise) is absolutely atrocious. There have been games that have such a bad grind that I just got bored and stopped playing. There are also other games that are not frustrating because of the grind, but they lack basic quality of life features that make the most simple of things take much longer than they should (looking at you Space Engineers).

I really hope Kerbal 2 doesn’t fall into this trap. The game should be painful to a degree, but the devs need to make sure that theres a light at the end of tunnel. There should be a moment after all of your hard work where you can see your colony up and running, look over other planets and admire an alien star. If there’re any devs reading this, please take this into account.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, BowlerHatGuy2 said:

Playing a lot of semi-realistic games recently, and I’ve been reminded of something. The Grind for a lot of realistic games (progression wise) is absolutely atrocious. There have been games that have such a bad grind that I just got bored and stopped playing. There are also other games that are not frustrating because of the grind, but they lack basic quality of life features that make the most simple of things take much longer than they should (looking at you Space Engineers).

I really hope Kerbal 2 doesn’t fall into this trap. The game should be painful to a degree, but the devs need to make sure that theres a light at the end of tunnel. There should be a moment after all of your hard work where you can see your colony up and running, look over other planets and admire an alien star. If there’re any devs reading this, please take this into account.

Chasing realism is the worst way to make a game.

You are not going to simulate everything, not by a long shot, the market is full of overly-complex simulators that suck at being games.

You design the gameplay first, the kind of interactions you want the player to have, and then decide what realistic feature could better serve that gameplay element.

Micrometeorites and orbital decay? There's almost no significant gameplay loop you could design around those except to give a limited life to early tech satellites and station (goodbye to the idea of building an early game commnet  network).

On the other hand, life support or reentry heating? Plenty of gameplay it could serve.

 

[Just a random person]

Devs have already confirmed that automated resource delivery routes will be a thing. I believe that will remove a lot of grind, not having to manually fly every resupply mission between surface colony x and orbital station y. Not sure about other stuff though, but the devs have said they don't want KSP2 to be grindy.

[Pthigrivi]

I think the grind and realism questions are somewhat separate. Realism is a great place to start and can lead to some really cool gameplay, but often things need to be simplified or omitted to keep things fun. Grind isn't necessarily related. Some realistic things are grindy and some aren't and vice versa. All grind is is repetition. Landing on Minmus is fun, but hopping to your 10th visually indistinct biome on Minmus is grind. Finding a way to intercept and rescue a stranded kerbal is fun, but going out on your 12th rescue contract because the cost of new recruits keeps increasing is grind. They've mentioned supply routes which will cut out a lot of fuel run babysitting, but we haven't heard much about science or kerbal skill leveling or how missions will be generated, each of which comes with its own set of grindy incentives. 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Akagi]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think the grind and realism questions are somewhat separate. Realism is a great place to start and can lead to some really cool gameplay, but often things need to be simplified or omitted to keep things fun. Grind isn't necessarily related. Some realistic things are grindy and some aren't and vice versa. All grind is is repetition. Landing on Minmus is fun, but hopping to your 10th visually indistinct biome on Minmus is grind. Finding a way to intercept and rescue a stranded kerbal is fun, but going out on your 12th rescue contract because the cost of new recruits keeps increasing is grind. They've mentioned supply routes which will cut out a lot of fuel run babysitting, but we haven't heard much about science or kerbal skill leveling or how missions will be generated, each of which comes with its own set of grindy incentives. 

I agree. Rescue contracts... rrrgh!

[BowlerHatGuy3]

L

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think the grind and realism questions are somewhat separate. Realism is a great place to start and can lead to some really cool gameplay, but often things need to be simplified or omitted to keep things fun. Grind isn't necessarily related. Some realistic things are grindy and some aren't and vice versa. All grind is is repetition. Landing on Minmus is fun, but hopping to your 10th visually indistinct biome on Minmus is grind. Finding a way to intercept and rescue a stranded kerbal is fun, but going out on your 12th rescue contract because the cost of new recruits keeps increasing is grind. They've mentioned supply routes which will cut out a lot of fuel run babysitting, but we haven't heard much about science or kerbal skill leveling or how missions will be generated, each of which comes with its own set of grindy incentives. 

Just making the connection that many realistic games rely on extreme repetition.

Edited July 26, 2022 by BowlerHatGuy3
L

[Pthigrivi]

Oh gotcha gotcha. And in fairness real life does include a lot of repetition and grind. 

[shdwlrd]

There are many games where the grind is the base game with breaks where you actually have fun. There is a few games I would enjoy if it wasn't for the grind. (Valheim, Icarus)

But for KSP2, I feel that the grind will be something you would do anyway. An example would be getting everything you need to start a base/colony to a location and getting the logistics setup for it. All the true, boring grind is promised to be automated/abstracted away to the background.