First impression from Scott Manley's gameplay video.

[Tweeker]

 

13 hours ago, GoldForest said:

4 million players out of steam's 120 million? I would call that niche.

KSP being a space sim when there's under 10 total space sim games? Niche. 

You laugh, but the facts speak for themselves. KSP is niche. 

 

The facts do speak for themselves, KSP is in the top 0.1% for life time revenue, and top 0.2% for units sold. Top 99.9th percentile is very far from being niche. 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by Tweeker

[BeastHunter]

The new tutorial:

”Do you want to get to space? Have you tried using a rocket?”

Everyone who paid $50 for an early access game that requires an RTX 2060 and doesn’t know what a rocket is:

19 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

This is an incredibly childish post. This is a game that's trying to bring new players in to the franchise. 

If a new player doesn’t know what a rocket is, this isn’t the franchise for them.

[Drakenred65]

13 hours ago, Tweeker said:

 

 

LOL. 

 

13 hours ago, GoldForest said:

13 hours ago, GoldForest said:

4 million copies is niche in today's standards when games regularly sell 30 to 100 million copies. 

But the copies sold doesn't make it niche. It's genre does. Doesn't matter if it sells 3 billion copies. KSP is a niche game. 

Early access. Very early access. 

 

You do realize if it sold that many copies that's over 12 times the  current number one game. Granted Yay!  Someone finally topped Minecraft.  On the other hand people still call Minecraft niche so. . .moving on. 

 

[Tweeker]

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I don't know I think the tutorials are great. They're not for grumpy middle age veterans of KSP1 like us, they're there to onboard new players, many of them kids. If they can explain this stuff for kids then they can explain them to anyone. The ones we've seen have been pretty effective at describing complicated ideas in a really easy to understand way. 

As to the price I think given everything we'll be getting over the next year or two from colonies to interstellar and multiplayer $50 is a steal. But yknow the EA scene isn't for everyone so I think players should just join in when they're comfortable. 

The problem with targeting the tutorials to kids is that you create additional barrier to entry for other new players.  If I showed this to my teenaged nephews it would not entice them to play the game. 

 

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

If I showed this to my teenaged nephews it would not entice them to play the game.

There is a (thankfully small) age range where nothing will entice you to do ANYTHING.

The best shot you have to get their interest is to strictly forbid them from playing it.

[Tweeker]

18 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

There is a (thankfully small) age range where nothing will entice you to do ANYTHING.

The best shot you have to get their interest is to strictly forbid them from playing it.

But there are things you can do that will negatively effect their impression of the game. 

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Tweeker

[Kerbal3]

16 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

There is a (thankfully small) age range where nothing will entice you to do ANYTHING.

The best shot you have to get their interest is to strictly forbid them from playing it.

I could not disagree more.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The tutorial is not ABOUT the Kerbals.
It's a part of the authentic real training course FOR them, right from the KSC Asronaut Complex.

I think the devs completely missed an amazing opportunity to add to the realism and immersiveness of the game in the tutorials by not having p.a.i.g.e. speak in Kerblish.

[Catto]

How about, you just turn it off in the settings?

It is highly possible you can just turn it off. If not, you can just mute your speakers

I am very optimistic about this release and the only thing that can make me sad is if my PC can't run it (it's beefy but old)

 

[GoldForest]

2 hours ago, Tweeker said:

 

 

The facts do speak for themselves, KSP is in the top 0.1% for life time revenue, and top 0.2% for units sold. Top 99.9th percentile is very far from being niche. 

 

Again, copies sold do not make it niche. The target audience and what the product does make it niche. Spaceflight simulators are niche. Nothing you say will change that. KSP is niche. 

[RayneCloud]

2 hours ago, BeastHunter said:

The new tutorial:

”Do you want to get to space? Have you tried using a rocket?”

Everyone who paid $50 for an early access game that requires an RTX 2060 and doesn’t know what a rocket is:

If a new player doesn’t know what a rocket is, this isn’t the franchise for them.

So you don't want children to learn about STEM and Space Flight then? I mean, I guess that's a stance to take, but I don't agree with it.

[Sunforge]

1 hour ago, Tweeker said:

If I showed this to my teenaged nephews it would not entice them to play the game. 

If the incredibly niche audience of your teenaged nephews would refuse to play the games strictly because of the tutorials, tell them not to watch the tutorials. Send *them* to Scott since that seems to be what you want to do, don't use them as a straw man to complain about the *optional* tutorials (which so far seem wonderful, btw).

[Tweeker]

24 minutes ago, Sunforge said:

If the incredibly niche audience of your teenaged nephews would refuse to play the games strictly because of the tutorials, tell them not to watch the tutorials. Send *them* to Scott since that seems to be what you want to do, don't use them as a straw man to complain about the *optional* tutorials (which so far seem wonderful, btw).

It's not as if teenaged boy are adverse to playing video games. But as I said before, the style of the  video games will effect their reaction to it.  That hold true for adults too. Appealing to new players is laudable, but when it comes at the expense of the  target audience  you'll get into the territory of diminishing returns. Eventually you'll be driving away more players than you attract. 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Tweeker

[Rocket Farmer]

9 hours ago, cfds said:

I knew the inane "But a movie costs $10/hour" - "argument" would appear sooner rather than later. In a movie, all you have to do is sit back and be entertained (I guess you mainly pay to enjoy a movie on a large screen with surround sound?).  A set of Yahtzee dice costs can provide endless hours of fun, that does not main that they a worth more than a couple of dollars.

In this sandbox you can do nothing more than in a very bare bones version of KSP.

And there is no mod support (Scott Manley mentioned it in this very video).

And there is especially no promise to deliver more.

It boggles the mind how many people are there to buy an empty shell of a game at absurd prices and keep this  .. business scheme going.

 

Seriously?  So a movie is worth 500X more value because you just sit and passively watch?

You do understand active engaged people actually get more value out of creating and exploring than passively watching right?

Yahtzee dice.  Good comparison.  I googled and a set costs $8.  Given on KSP I spent $0.02/ hour I hope you can get 400 play hours out of those dice to match KSP.

”Absurd price?”  Did you miss the “entire Kerbal system”, “new parts” etc?  Even if you are good that’s still a couple of hundred hours to explore everything.    So $0.25/hour ($50/200 hours) is an “absurd price.”  That doesn’t count all the extras and mods that will end up in the game.

“No promise to deliver more?”  Except for the roadmap promising to deliver more and giving the order it is coming in?  From the same guys that promised a release date and will seemingly hit it?

Basically you want a game that costs 10s if millions to develop and yet for youv”meh $50, it’s not worth more than $45.”  Lol.  

[kerbiloid]

Obviously, the game is for kids.

Imagine that you are saying to an adult person:

"We are going to put you in a single-seat, cramped capsule and send to Mars without supplies. Ah, yes, we are not sure that you have enough fuel to return,"

What would be the reaction?

[Tweeker]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Obviously, the game is for kids.

Imagine that you are saying to an adult person:

"We are going to put you in a single-seat, cramped capsule and send to Mars without supplies. Ah, yes, we are not sure that you have enough fuel to return,"

What would be the reaction?

Yeah, kids with money for a $1000 graphics card. 

 

[cfds]

11 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why would they charge £20 more than KSP 1's £30 for a game whose developers have not given up at the bottom of the hill, whose developers are going to spend the next few years doing more than what KSP 1's devs did - muck around trying and failing to redo the asset art styles 

I don't know, probably to do with the fact the devs know what they're doing and aren't, for example, going to push a career mode out, see it fail beyond a few hardcore players, and completely give up on making it make sense.

Unfortunately, this remains to be seen. And the fact that rockets noodle about like in KSP without KJR (or autostruts) does not bode well.

[K^2]

On 2/20/2023 at 6:00 PM, Tweeker said:

It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me.

That kind of a response to an optional tutorial reeks of the same kind of insecurity that leads to the, "You can't have an easy mode in this game, where is the challenge!!!111ONE" This tutorial is for people who need this explained to them. Anyone else will look up a tutorial on Youtube anyways. You're not the target audience, move along.

On 2/20/2023 at 6:00 PM, Tweeker said:

Why are they charging full price for an unfinished game?

Because people will pay it. If you don't want to pay $50 now, you can pay $70 when the game releases or wait until it's on sale a couple of years from now. Or just not play it at all. It's absolutely your call, but acting like you're on some sort of a moral high ground because you refuse to pay for the early access is not constructive in the least.

15 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

Yeah, kids with money for a $1000 graphics card. 

No, sure, they should have made a separate tutorial just for the people who get early access. You know, the people who are excited enough about KSP2 to get in on the early access? Played lots of KSP? And actually do know where to find information? Yeah, lets make a separate, serious tutorial for these people. That will be a good use of the resources.

[cfds]

1 hour ago, Rocket Farmer said:

Yahtzee dice.  Good comparison.  I googled and a set costs $8.  Given on KSP I spent $0.02/ hour I hope you can get 400 play hours out of those dice to match KSP.

Well, considering that my family still uses the same set of dice for 30 odd years: Probably.

1 hour ago, Rocket Farmer said:

”Absurd price?”  Did you miss the “entire Kerbal system”, “new parts” etc?  Even if you are good that’s still a couple of hundred hours to explore everything.    So $0.25/hour ($50/200 hours) is an “absurd price.”  That doesn’t count all the extras and mods that will end up in the game.

It is a factor of 1150% on top of your quoted $0.02/hour, so it looks like it. And no, I do not count things that do not exist yet.

1 hour ago, Rocket Farmer said:

“No promise to deliver more?”  Except for the roadmap promising to deliver more and giving the order it is coming in?  From the same guys that promised a release date and will seemingly hit it?

Basically you want a game that costs 10s if millions to develop and yet for youv”meh $50, it’s not worth more than $45.”  Lol.  

$50 buy you exactly the tech demo that was shown, which has less features than a game that costs $10 on steam often enough to consider that its retail price. The  other $40 buy you a lottery ticket for further development. Perhaps the roadmap will be finished some day and the game will be worth the $50.  But perhaps Take Two decides after the first update that already have the money of the "Shut up and take my money" crowd and it is too expensive to try to develop enough to convince other people to buy.

And wasn't the original release data some time in 2020? And this is early access, not a release...

[Tweeker]

13 minutes ago, K^2 said:

That kind of a response to an optional tutorial reeks of the same kind of insecurity that leads to the, "You can't have an easy mode in this game, where is the challenge!!!111ONE" This tutorial is for people who need this explained to them. Anyone else will look up a tutorial on Youtube anyways. You're not the target audience, move along.

Because people will pay it. If you don't want to pay $50 now, you can pay $70 when the game releases or wait until it's on sale a couple of years from now. Or just not play it at all. It's absolutely your call, but acting like you're on some sort of a moral high ground because you refuse to pay for the early access is not constructive in the least.

No, sure, they should have made a separate tutorial just for the people who get early access. You know, the people who are excited enough about KSP2 to get in on the early access? Played lots of KSP? And actually do know where to find information? Yeah, lets make a separate, serious tutorial for these people. That will be a good use of the resources.

That kind of attitude reeks of gatekeeping and snobbery.  Like it or get out is not exactly how you welcome to new players. 

 

[K^2]

1 hour ago, Tweeker said:

Like it or get out is not exactly how you welcome to new players.

Of course not. But if your entire criticism is built on, "I know what I'm doing, stop patronizing me," you can't exactly start claiming to be a new player.

Now, if you were in the demographic to whom the tutorials were targeted and you thought they were not helpful, we could have a constructive discussion about it. As it stands, you're just being upset that something in the game isn't made specifically for you.

[Tweeker]

27 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Of course not. But if your entire criticism is built on, "I know what I'm doing, stop patronizing me," you can't exactly start claiming to be a new player.

Now, if you were in the demographic to whom the tutorials were targeted and you thought they were not helpful, we could have a constructive discussion about it. As it stands, you're just being upset that something in the game isn't made specifically for you.

No,  My criticism is "You're going to drive away players with a kid voiced tutorial"

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by Tweeker

[GoldForest]

Just now, Tweeker said:

No,  My criticism is "You're going to drive away players with a kid voiced tutorial"

 

Honestly, after hearing the voice in this video, it doesn't sound like a kid's voice to me anymore. Sounds more like a female voice that's higher pitched than most others. 

 

[Tweeker]

2 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Honestly, after hearing the voice in this video, it doesn't sound like a kid's voice to me anymore. Sounds more like a female voice that's higher pitched than most others. 

 

Kiddie voice, or Kiddie speak, it's definitely not aimed at anyone over 12

"Look at all those rocket engines!" 

Compare to the tutorial in MS flight simulator :

 

 

  

[GoldForest]

3 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

Kiddie voice, or Kiddie speak, it's definitely not aimed at anyone over 12

"Look at all those rocket engines!" 

Compare to the tutorial in MS flight simulator :

 

 

  

No, because you can't compare them. 

MSFS is aimmed at mostly kids above the age of 14, because not many if any kid is going to play MSFS. 

KSP 2 is aimed at ALL ages. So the voice has to be engaging to children. 

Nate Simpson's daughter watches the tutorials and he says she LOVES them. She's like... 5... I think... maybe younger? idk, she's really young though, but the tutorials engage her, and she learns from them. That's what the tutorials are aiming for. To engage people. Most adults can't engage kids. 

Though, I think I've come up with a solution. Have multiple voice actors. Have the game ask for your age group. 1-6, 7-10, 11-15, 16-20, so on and so forth, then have a specific voice actor for each group.