Reading into KSP 2 EA Features/Non-Features

[VlonaldKerman]

WARNING! Rambly post incoming. Also, if I say EA, I mean early access, not the despicable company (lol).

 

I just want to preface this post by saying that I adore KSP and intend on buying KSP 2 the moment early access releases. I recently shelled out several thousand dollars for a new top-of-the-line PC specifically so that I could play KSP 2 with the best hardware possible. I have real faith in the KSP 2 dev team, as well- they seem smart, competent, and truly passionate about their game. I also don't care, in principle, about the game being in a state that many perceive to be "undercooked"... as far as I'm concerned, the earlier I can get my hands on the game, the better, period.

That being said, I've been thinking about what I've seen so far from the preview footage of KSP 2 and while I'm not in the "We're being scammed! 5 years and they've done nothing! If you buy the game you are a sheep!" camp that seems to haunt the forums and youtube comment sections, I do think there are some important/revealing shortcomings of the EA release, that bear discussing, and I'm interested to hear the community's thoughts on this. My central observation/theory is this: KSP 2 EA is being released because they need the cash to continue to fund/justify the project to take-two.

 

There is a 0% chance that, upon conception of the KSP 2 project, the intention was for the first EA release to not include: re-entry visuals/heating, auto-strut, airbreaks, high-def atmospheric scattering and planetshine, high-def surfaces for bodies like the Mun, better-looking clouds, at least marginally better preformace, etc. Maybe you can take issue with a few items on this list and say that it's reasonable for these to be left out of the VERY FIRST release, but the lack of re-entry heating is a dead giveaway; it's such an integral part of the Kerbal experience, there is not a chance they would release even a beta version without this, absent other factors. To me, this signals that the 2/24 release of EA v0.1 was not a calculated, "OK, the game is ready for the first beta release in the current state", but rather an edict from corporate that, in order to justify further investment into the project, the KSP 2 team would have to prove that the game will in fact sell enough, even in its early access state. This also explains the lofty price tag of $50... well above any other game I've ever heard of that's in this early of a state, except for high-level contributions with things like "your name in the credits" to an indie studio.

Another aspect that leads me to suspect this potentially risky state of affairs for KSP 2 is the fact that, other than an influx of cash, the main reason for doing EA is to gather community feedback. The devs are very adamant that they value community feedback and I truly believe them, however, the current state of the game seems to be one in which there are very immediate, obvious areas that need improvement, that you don't need "community feedback" to point out to you as a developer- see the list of things I mentioned in the prior paragraph, for just a FEW examples, out of many. To be sure, there are many areas in which community feedback will clearly be immediately useful, especially when it comes to the UI, which is generally pretty good, but definitely still needs some tuning. But I think the "community feedback" period of this EA release will be relatively short- that is to say, there are not currently many changes/fixes/problems which satisfy BOTH of the conditions: "Not obvious, and therefore need the community to point out problems or give their opinions", AND, "Currently in the game, so that the community can actually experience them to give feedback." To summarize: the game is still in such a young state, that I can't imagine community feedback on the current build will be incredibly valuable, and certainly what feedback we will provide, would also be provided if they waited and released a later build (i.e. the UI would be the same, and garner the same feedback, if the game were released this August, instead of now), and thus, there is no real point to releasing the game now, for feedback purposes. Therefore, the EA release is being shipped out NOT primarily for the reason of community feedback, but rather because of the cash that will come in. Am I way off-base?

 

The video which inspired me to write this post is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAoLGHG8Fg4 . In it, Billy Winn Jr. interviews Nate Simpson, and one of the other devs (I forgot his name, I'm sorry). In general, I would characterize their affect in the interview as subdued, and somewhat apprehensive. It struck me that they were not proud of the product they were putting out... yet. This came through especially in their answers to the question of whether or not they plan on adding things like ground effects, or weather, into the game. If I recall their answers were very wordy, like they were trying to be careful and handle the topic delicately, and essentially boiled down to, "It depends where it is on the priority list of the playerbase," which, to me, is code for, "We currently are not planning on adding those things. If players really, really seem to want them, then these features may be added way down the line, provided the project is still alive at that point, and we have the resources to deliver anything but exactly what we initially promised for the game, or less." I may be totally misjudging their demeanor, but it seems like they were timid because they KNOW the current build is not up to their standards, and they care about the game, and really want to do a good job. This point is definitely disputable, but I thought it bore mentioning, even though I think my stance on the current state of the game is substantiated even without this additional evidence.

 

I know I've been pretty critical of the state of the game in this post, but that really isn't my intention. Rather, it's the opposite: If KSP 2's development is at the point where they are willing to release a premature build of the game for $50 in order to continue to fund development, then I'm hoping that as many people buy the game as possible, because I do have faith in the dev team. If I didn't believe that the devs will do a good job, provided they have the resources, then I wouldn't feel this way. I'm not trying to tell anybody how to spend their money, and $50 is certainly a lot to pay from what amounts to a promise from a dev team that may or may not be almost out of money, but if you have the money, you like the dev team, and you care about KSP 2, then, IF IM CORRECT, this may be worth considering. It would be a shame, for instance, to write the game off as a "scam/failure", and not buy it even though you have the money, when money (or the lack thereof) is precisely the thing preventing the game from being incredible. Again, all of this is only valid if my wild speculation is true.

 

Sorry for the mega-long post, but if I'm right, I think this is an important topic. I'm super curious to know what your thoughts are about this subject. Have a great day!

[Dman979]

Welcome aboard, @VlonaldKerman! That's a lengthy first post, but you raise some interesting concerns. You've obviously thought about this a lot. I have not, so I'll leave the discussion to others with stronger opinions.

[Alexoff]

52 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

To me, this signals that the 2/24 release of EA v0.1 was not a calculated, "OK, the game is ready for the first beta release in the current state", but rather an edict from corporate that, in order to justify further investment into the project, the KSP 2 team would have to prove that the game will in fact sell enough, even in its early access state.

It was quite obvious right away - T2 promised shareholders to issue KSP2 in fiscal year 2023, which ends just in March 2023. I wrote about this in advance, after which I received a wave of hatred from the community. The unsuccessful release of GTA3 forced the development to be accelerated, materials about the development of the game almost ceased to appear on the forum. For some reason, many people ignore the fact that T2 bought the rights to the game to MAKE money on it, and not to please us. But they wanted to start earning money back in 2020, all the subsequent time is unaccounted for costs and lost profits. So T2 set a tough deadline - release what you have, or .... If the game does not bring the desired profit immediately, then the consequences can be sad. More recently, T2 reported serious financial losses and vowed to cut costs. Who exactly will they decide to cut? It is unlikely that the developers of GTA 6.

[VlonaldKerman]

24 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

It was quite obvious right away - T2 promised shareholders to issue KSP2 in fiscal year 2023, which ends just in March 2023. I wrote about this in advance, after which I received a wave of hatred from the community. The unsuccessful release of GTA3 forced the development to be accelerated, materials about the development of the game almost ceased to appear on the forum. For some reason, many people ignore the fact that T2 bought the rights to the game to MAKE money on it, and not to please us. But they wanted to start earning money back in 2020, all the subsequent time is unaccounted for costs and lost profits. So T2 set a tough deadline - release what you have, or .... If the game does not bring the desired profit immediately, then the consequences can be sad. More recently, T2 reported serious financial losses and vowed to cut costs. Who exactly will they decide to cut? It is unlikely that the developers of GTA 6.

Interesting- I didn't know about the statements made to shareholders. Sorry you received a backlash for talking about it- I think there's a tendency to conflate skepticism with close-mindedness, as well as criticism/discussion of T2 with criticism/discussion of the KSP 2 devs, leading to some of the community leaping to the defense of the devs, without realizing you were actually commenting on T2 itself. Obviously I didn't see exactly what people said, but I suspect that's it. I share your concern for the future of KSP 2, especially in light of the specific statements T2 has made to their shareholders about cutting costs.

[t_v]

I generally agree with your speculations. I'm currently witnessing a big software project about to launch - it is a mad scramble to get features that were promised all along in for a deadline that was pushed as long as possible, and the software is still not going to be complete. I think that with practically any software project above a certain size, this problem happens where things are missing. Very likely, any "finished" software is just software that reached its deadline and then spent a few months wrapping up the features in-progress before calling it a day. Software under active development doesn't do this, and instead will always have unfinished features being worked on, meaning that it will always be unfinished. As a result, the time of release isn't dictated as much by the completion of the game, but instead by other pressures such as money or, in this case, shareholder promises. 

As you said, there is no chance that they would leave out re-entry heating if they had any option to develop it in time. And if the developers set their own EA release date based on readiness, they would make sure that such a feature made it in. Development isn't perfect and features more often than not take vastly more time to develop than anticipated, but at some point along development it is possible to make a reasonably good prediction of when features will be complete, and that point probably hadn't been reached by the time the release date was set. For example, if you already have a semi-workable heating model and you set the release date, you can kind of know how long it is going to take and use that to inform the deadline. But if you set a deadline and then start working on the heating model to try to fit it in, your best predictions might be off and the feature will be incomplete on release. If it is any consolation for that particular thing, you only have to put up with it for "a very short period" before a week-one patch probably implements all of the features that were almost done. 

One good thing is that even if funding for KSP 2 is cut immediately upon launch (which would be terrible because a lot of people wouldn't get the features they might have bought the game expecting, don't get me wrong), the features that are in this intermediary state will likely make it into the game just because a few patches will be released to shore it up before the devs are relocated to other projects. 

We can't really say much about how likely T2 is to shut down the project and what amount of sales will mitigate it by how much, and speculations ranged from 'they will fund continued development until full release for sure and then very likely further' up to 'there is no chance that we will get even the first roadmap item unless the game sells 1 million copies, and development will absolutely end with 1.0'. I have to say I appreciate that you are taking your observations and presenting your predictions as what they are - predictions, and not the only conclusion that can be reasonably reached. In the past, a lot of both positive and negative speculation was stated as fact, and that created some issue. For my own stance, I am speculating that short of a coordinated boycott, the game will have enough sales to make it further into development and will follow a tenuous path à la No Man's Sky, hopefully making it to 1.0 with enough users to continue development through both updates and DLCs. But the most important thing is to withhold final judgement until we have something concrete on whether the game will be canceled or not. 

This post is already incredibly long, but here's a few notes on specific portions of your post:

3 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Therefore, the EA release is being shipped out NOT primarily for the reason of community feedback, but rather because of the cash that will come in

The release date may be dictated largely by money, but after the initial patches, the game will probably be in a state fit for some feedback. EA is never exclusively for feedback or money, but I think that if/as development gets past the first few weeks, feedback will be more important to the EA. 

3 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

"We currently are not planning on adding those things. If players really, really seem to want them, then these features may be added way down the line, provided the project is still alive at that point, and we have the resources to deliver anything but exactly what we initially promised for the game, or less."

I think those features may fall into the realm of wish-list goals which, as you said, will be implemented only after the core gameplay features are in, but I think that even if players aren't actively crying out for them (which they are), these features will eventually be implemented. They might be really low priority though, below the fan-requested features even. 

[Kaerbanogue]

The state of the EA is indeed concerning. As you said, the absence of reentry heating and thermal systems at launch gives away the fact that the game isn't ready for public release yet from a quality standpoint. Even if it's for "a brief window at the beginning of Early Access", I doubt that Nate Simpson, who sounds legitimately passionate about the project, would qualify this situation as satisfying in regard to both quality standards and customers appreciation. It seems quite rational to assume that T2 gave KSP2 a definitive release window and that Intercept Games had to release a product for us to buy during that time period.

Now if I'd have to summarize your concerns about this whole situation, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'd say that you're worried about the eventuality of T2 stopping financing KSP 2 if the game sales are insufficient.
Obviously T2 wants returns for their investments and judging by the long development, the expansion of the game's scope and the priority put on accessibility to get new people aboard, they seem to aim for a lot of sales. It's reasonable to think that as KSP 2 is bigger in every way possible than KSP 1, the budget of the game should be greater too and therefore so are the targeted sales numbers. Moreover, it's alarming to think that the "novice" audience is going to be introduced to KSP with this EA, missing core features of KSP 1 and requiring a high-end config to run decently. Although KSP 1 fans are going to buy KSP2, make a good review and support the project no matter what (because we know the potential of the game, and we know that Nate Simpson is going to make everything he can in order to make KSP 2 the best game he could), the new audience in the other hand is likely to discover KSP via this EA and is likely to not want to buy the game or refund it and making a bad review for the game.
That is, I think, indeed very worrying about the potential success of KSP 2... that's the way it is, the game is going to release in 62h from the time i'm writing this and is going to be in the state we know.

However, it could not be as bad as it sounds, I was watching all the previews from the ESA event and I found interesting that the PC Gamer and IGN reviews, which both journalists were exactly this "novice" target audience, (having zero knowledge in KSP, orbital mechanics or space rocketry) sounded like they had a ton of fun with the game. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I look back at the time I started playing KSP and how the game could have no planetary bodies except Kerbin and I wouldn't have noticed. I remember having to watch Scott Manley videos to understand how to play and not understanding a single sentence he was making, since I'm not a native English speaker and space rocketry use a very technical language. With the lack of tutorials and personal knowledge, it took me weeks to consistently reach orbit and months to reach Duna and dock for the first time.
Anyway what I want to point out is that, us, KSP 1 fans, set up our expectations very high, rightfully so because since 2019 we were told the game was going to be this ambitious sequel to our beloved KSP 1 adding a ton of features and challenges; but a novice player that is going to try KSP for the first time with KSP 2 EA may very well enjoy the game for the process of learning orbitals and rocketry by trials and errors as much as we did when we started KSP. In fact, features such as interstellar, colonies and resource gathering are targeted for already experienced players and their absence in the 0.1 EA could not impact the experience of a novice player in any way.
But on the matter of KSP 1 fans getting KSP 2 EA Day-one, the game is going to be as unfinished as it seems, but again, Nate Simpson. I think I can speak in the name of all the KSP community by saying that the man really earned our trust and no one here have any doubt that he's going to do anything he can to deliver the game he promised us back in 2019 and that he will try to push the game as far as possible no doubt.

In conclusion, I would say that on one hand this version 0.1 of the EA is indeed under delivering in many ways for a KSP 1 fan but on the other hand newcomers could very well enjoy this game as it is.  As long as the time between the release and the first roadmap updates doesn't exceed the time that new players would take to start mastering this version of the game, it would keep them engaged. I think if this reasoning is correct, the same could be said about the absence of reentry heating and thermal systems, yes it's bad not having it Day-one, but I think the success of the game is going to rely on the speed of the game's updates more than the actual state of the game at launch. KSP is such a complex game after all... if heating is implemented quick enough, new players could not even realize a core mechanic is missing.
KSP 1 fans are likely to buy the game in early access and are going to support the game no matter what, and the percentage of new players that will buy the game in EA are, in my opinion, going to enjoy the KSP 1 experience in KSP 2 not even aware of what's missing in the game; and the percentage that will buy it later will have a more fleshed out experience.
So let's hope heating is implemented quickly enough and that the next roadmap milestone (science) is around the corner.

Tldr: EA state is really bad, but it could not impact sales and reviews this much. Vets know the game is in good hands and how the game is going to be great once it will start to take off and new players will need some time to start mastering the game, at which point the game is going to be in a much more complete state, hopefully. And in the meantime they're going to have fun with learning the basics of the game.

Edited February 22, 2023 by Kaerbanogue
format, typos & duke

[J.Random]

5 hours ago, Kaerbanogue said:

but again, Nate Simpson. I think I can speak in the name of all the KSP community by saying that the man really earned our trust and no one here have any doubt that he's going to do anything he can

Wait, what did he do to earn it? Did I miss something? Also, maybe you shouldn't think that you can speak in the name of anybody except yourself, especially while making such blanket statements.

[MarcAbaddon]

3 hours ago, J.Random said:

Wait, what did he do to earn it? Did I miss something? Also, maybe you shouldn't think that you can speak in the name of anybody except yourself, especially while making such blanket statements.

Yeah, I feel the same. He seems like a nice guy, but it's not as if he has delivered yet or been involved in KSP 1 as far as I know. So keeping an open mind, but I wouldn't say he has particularly earned our trust (or distrust) yet. If anyone,

I'd say Chris Adderley/Nertea is maybe the Dev who has already earned trust with the excellent work on KSP 1 mods.

[Crabman]

Satisfactory is in Early Access since 2019. It will be really bad for us if we need to wait this much to have a stable game out of EA and have KSP 1 features included in KSP 2

[Baleine]

2 hours ago, Crabman said:

Satisfactory is in Early Access since 2019. It will be really bad for us if we need to wait this much to have a stable game out of EA and have KSP 1 features included in KSP 2

I think you should expect for a several years early access. KSP 1 stayed in early access for 4 years

[Kerbart]

What upsets me is not the EA state. KSP1 went through something similar and came out fine-ish. Yes, there are issues with KSP1 andf those are largely due to (the lack of ) an architecture that wasn't designed for what the game eventually did. KSP2 (likely*) won't suffer from that.

What's disappointing is that EA was announced "because we want feedback before adding all features" which, I'm sure is true, while omitting the glaring "it's EA because we're nowhere near where we want to be for launch." That omission covers a pretty big part of the negative reactions (lack of xyz, lackluster performance despite chad hardware reqs, etc). The issue is: can we take their word for it?

Now all that might be covered in due time. I certainly hope so, I love the game. But there's the rub: "we're selling the game for nearly full retail in a half baked state. But trust us, we're going to make it super over the next few years." I want that. I'm sure the intention is there. But the intention was also there to publish the game in 2020. That was unrealistic. But now a lot of people wonder: how realistic is it to expect the roadmap features and decent performance?

– on that note, I think that fixing performance will now be more important than features like shader collision and reentry heating. It probably makes sense to fix those first, but few people are willing to drop a grand or more on a new computer for a game with an uncertain future. Make it work on a wider range, and more people can buy it. "But Kerbart, EA is not for everyone!" Yeah, right. It'll need to generate sales to survive, that was the point (and not feedback, as nice as it sounds). Selling to the 97th percentile of hardware only is not going to accomplish that.

The next few weeks will be critical. Do we get rapid follow-ups and fixes, like KSP1? Things will be good. Do we get weeks, if not months, of radio silence from the update department? I'll fear the future.

For now have no reason to buy a heavy duty GPU (=new PC, my potato can't handle the current generation), although it'll be fun to run Cuda and Dask on it. And I'm not willing to drop 4 digits on that given my doubts on how it will turn out. Hopefully the game will appear on GFN; I'll be happy to buy it at that point (two weeks from now?). Or, even if performance is atrocious, when I hear news that it will slug along on potatoes.

* Likely: we have to believe the devs on their word that the architecture supports it. Credibility has suffered greatly though...

Edited February 22, 2023 by Kerbart

[VlonaldKerman]

Thanks to all who've responded- lots of good an interesting points.

 

20 hours ago, t_v said:

I think that with practically any software project above a certain size, this problem happens where things are missing. Very likely, any "finished" software is just software that reached its deadline and then spent a few months wrapping up the features in-progress before calling it a day. Software under active development doesn't do this, and instead will always have unfinished features being worked on, meaning that it will always be unfinished. As a result, the time of release isn't dictated as much by the completion of the game, but instead by other pressures such as money or, in this case, shareholder promises... if you already have a semi-workable heating model and you set the release date, you can kind of know how long it is going to take and use that to inform the deadline. But if you set a deadline and then start working on the heating model to try to fit it in, your best predictions might be off and the feature will be incomplete on release. If it is any consolation for that particular thing, you only have to put up with it for "a very short period" before a week-one patch probably implements all of the features that were almost done. 

Yes, this makes sense, and this is my hope for things like the reentry heating- they even mentioned that the pause menu bug w/ the dialog boxes flooding the screen didn't exist even two days prior to the event. Game development is chaotic, and things can break randomly. I think their immediate priorities should probably be (in addition to all the other general development stuff they're going to do anyways) reentry heating and autostruts. Rather than optimizing the game before most of the features are in, autostrut is probably the best way to improve performance, which is probably going to be very important for keeping the community on their side, even if it's not reasonable to expect good performance from a game in this stage of development.

20 hours ago, t_v said:

I have to say I appreciate that you are taking your observations and presenting your predictions as what they are - predictions, and not the only conclusion that can be reasonably reached... the most important thing is to withhold final judgement until we have something concrete on whether the game will be canceled or not. 

Thank you! I agree that judgement aught to be withheld.

20 hours ago, t_v said:

The release date may be dictated largely by money, but after the initial patches, the game will probably be in a state fit for some feedback. EA is never exclusively for feedback or money, but I think that if/as development gets past the first few weeks, feedback will be more important to the EA. 

I suppose this is true, however, I think that the feedback they receive in, let's arbitrarily say the next three weeks, they would probably also receive if they delayed the launch until the blatant issues that have divided the community (potentially unfairly) were at least partially resolved. In an abstract sense, timing doesn't impact the level of feedback you receive, as long as you are committed to implementing that feedback. They could, in principle, develop the whole game, and call the full release early access, in order to implement community feedback. The only downside would be the time wasted developing and perfecting feature that players would want to change anyway. The decision of when to release the game, therefore, is probably comprised (as far as I can tell) of three factors: getting money sooner, gaining trust/minimizing loss of trust of the community, and time-efficiency. Given that the current release date has arguably performed poorly on the 2nd metric, at least so far, and will likely only yield marginal gains on the 3rd metric, relative to a launch in, say, a few months, assuming their release date is a well-calculated decision, they are largely optimizing for the 1st, "getting money sooner" metric. Again, I'm pretty poorly informed on game development, so I may be totally off-the-mark.

 

18 hours ago, Kaerbanogue said:

Now if I'd have to summarize your concerns about this whole situation, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'd say that you're worried about the eventuality of T2 stopping financing KSP 2 if the game sales are insufficient.

Yes, pretty much. At least, I'm concerned that money will interfere with the quality of the final product we receive, wether by cancellation, or by the cutting of planned features.

18 hours ago, Kaerbanogue said:

However, it could not be as bad as it sounds, I was watching all the previews from the ESA event and I found interesting that the PC Gamer and IGN reviews, which both journalists were exactly this "novice" target audience, (having zero knowledge in KSP, orbital mechanics or space rocketry) sounded like they had a ton of fun with the game. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I look back at the time I started playing KSP and how the game could have no planetary bodies except Kerbin and I wouldn't have noticed... Anyway what I want to point out is that, us, KSP 1 fans, set up our expectations very high, rightfully so because since 2019 we were told the game was going to be this ambitious sequel to our beloved KSP 1 adding a ton of features and challenges; but a novice player that is going to try KSP for the first time with KSP 2 EA may very well enjoy the game for the process of learning orbitals and rocketry by trials and errors as much as we did when we started KSP. In fact, features such as interstellar, colonies and resource gathering are targeted for already experienced players and their absence in the 0.1 EA could not impact the experience of a novice player in any way.

This is a great point; I hadn't thought of it that way. As a KSP 1 fan, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees, and forget that what makes Kerbal great is already fundamentally present in KSP 2, and there's at least a relatively high floor for how well the game will perform, sales-wise. Also, KSP 2's enhanced on-boarding for new players will probably amplify this.

 

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

What's disappointing is that EA was announced "because we want feedback before adding all features" which, I'm sure is true, while omitting the glaring "it's EA because we're nowhere near where we want to be for launch." That omission covers a pretty big part of the negative reactions (lack of xyz, lackluster performance despite chad hardware reqs, etc). The issue is: can we take their word for it?

Now all that might be covered in due time. I certainly hope so, I love the game. But there's the rub: "we're selling the game for nearly full retail in a half baked state. But trust us, we're going to make it super over the next few years." I want that. I'm sure the intention is there. But the intention was also there to publish the game in 2020. That was unrealistic. But now a lot of people wonder: how realistic is it to expect the roadmap features and decent performance?

 

Agree. In my original post, I tip-toed around the elephant-in-the-room concern of many, that is, "Umm... the game was announced in 2019. I know the pandemic was rough on game development... but shouldn't the EA be in a more advanced state by now? It isn't normal for it to take 8 years for a game to be made, combining pre and post-early access." It's unclear why the game has taken so long, and the pandemic is the easy scapegoat but I think a lot of people, myself included, aren't totally sold on the pandemic being the only villain here. There was also a lot of internal turmoil in the company, and that probably took a toll. The silver lining is that in both the cases of the pandemic, and the internal issues, hopefully that's all water under the bridge and now, provided adequate funding, etc., development can now proceed more quickly and smoothly. Therefore, I'm cautiously optimistic, again, funding issue aside.

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

I think that fixing performance will now be more important than features like shader collision and reentry heating. It probably makes sense to fix those first, but few people are willing to drop a grand or more on a new computer for a game with an uncertain future. Make it work on a wider range, and more people can buy it. "But Kerbart, EA is not for everyone!" Yeah, right. It'll need to generate sales to survive, that was the point (and not feedback, as nice as it sounds). Selling to the 97th percentile of hardware only is not going to accomplish that.

Agree that performance is the primary hill to climb for them right now. However, unfortunately, I don't think its reasonable to expect performance to improve in the coming weeks. As others have mentioned, from a software development standpoint, optimization usually happens last, for good reason. It would be a very inefficient use of time for them to optimize now, before many (most?) of the features that will eventually need optimizing are even in the main build. 

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

The next few weeks will be critical. Do we get rapid follow-ups and fixes, like KSP1? Things will be good. Do we get weeks, if not months, of radio silence from the update department? I'll fear the future.

Double agree with this. Communication and rapid improvement will be key, especially with the community as divided and skeptical/pessimistic as it is. Inspiring confidence in the community will start a positive feedback loop: More community confidence --> More sales of EA ($$$) --> Continuing development at max pace/quality --> More community confidence --> etc.

 

Tl,dr: Thanks for all of your thoughtful responses- keep them coming! I mostly agree with what has been said.

Edited February 22, 2023 by VlonaldKerman
edited for clarity (clearly not for length, lol)

[p331083]

On 2/21/2023 at 12:05 PM, VlonaldKerman said:

Another aspect that leads me to suspect this potentially risky state of affairs for KSP 2 is the fact that, other than an influx of cash, the main reason for doing EA is to gather community feedback.

Ill let you in on a secret;

KSP2 is releasing as "early access" right now because Take Two promised share holders last year that KSP2 would launch Q1 2023(Q4 2023 in TT's accounting methods) . Its released under the guise of "early access" because it fulfills that corporate obligation yet also allows them to deflect any criticism or complaints about lack of content because its "early access".

This is straight from their Q4 2022 conference call released on March 31st, 2022;

 

https://ir.take2games.com/static-files/764e4e40-ee2c-4f60-83ab-b05c98df0c6d

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by p331083

[VlonaldKerman]

6 minutes ago, p331083 said:

Ill let you in on a secret;

KSP2 is releasing as "early access" right now because Take Two promised share holders last year that KSP2 would launch Q1 2023

Yes, Alexoff mentioned this in his post. The context of my saying "the other reason for EA is to gather community feedback" was that I felt, for a variety of reasons, like community feedback wasn't the purpose of this launch, and therefore, that the main reason for launching was to make the money sooner rather than later. 

I'll let you in on a secret: I agree with you. 

[Roostergod]

I think the fact that we have to speculate about this stuff shows that Intercept have failed massively at communicating with us, their customers. I hope that when EA begins they will start to provide regular updates (monthly at least, I'd prefer weekly or biweekly) about the state of the game, bug fixes, etc. Another way to keep us invested and assured that we will make it to full release is to make small content updates in between the major milestones. there are a lot of features missing from the build we saw that don't fit into any of them, like 1.875 parts, near future engines (orion, LANTR, plasma), airbrakes, and radiators, that will make sandbox a more complete experience while we wait for science, colonies, and so on.

[VlonaldKerman]

Agree with Roostergod- while it's easy to blame the community for either overreacting, or being overly optimistic or pessimistic, at the end of the day we are acting on very imperfect information, and that's on Intercept. If the game is truly on-track and is likely to succeed, then surely Intercept would benefit from being more transparent because people would be less skeptical and more willing to buy the game in EA.

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, VlonaldKerman said:

at the end of the day we are acting on very imperfect information, and that's on Intercept

I mean, the communication has been spotty-to-nonexistent since KSP2 was announced, why expect that to change now?

[AtomicTech]

13 hours ago, Jarin said:

I mean, the communication has been spotty-to-nonexistent since KSP2 was announced, why expect that to change now?

I'm hoping that they'll be better with that after the EA release like they've been promising.

[Baleine]

14 hours ago, Jarin said:

I mean, the communication has been spotty-to-nonexistent since KSP2 was announced, why expect that to change now?

Because it is on the best interest of Private Division. There is a severe trust issue at the moment. Lack of communication will worsen the matter

[Jarin]

Just now, Baleine said:

Because it is on the best interest of Private Division. There is a severe trust issue at the moment. Lack of communication will worsen the matter

That's a reason it would be ideal for it to change, but not a reason to expect it. We've already got the physics and jank of Squad's bad old days, so why not bring back their policy of radio silence too?

[Wheehaw Kerman]

11 minutes ago, Baleine said:

Because it is on the best interest of Private Division. There is a severe trust issue at the moment. Lack of communication will worsen the matter

I think there is a very minor issue with some over dramatic toxic gamers having meltdowns inside certain online echo chambers.  
 

From my perspective, it’s understandable that development took longer than planned, the state of the game is acceptable for EA purposes, the specs are understandable given EA and the unprecedented physics modelling involved, optimization probably won’t take that long, fifty bucks is reasonable for the game in its current state, and I’m looking forward to helping it reach it’s promised potential.

[Baleine]

I wouldn't dismiss the trusting issue so fast, but I guess we'll have an answer about the severity of the problem soon enough.

 

25 minutes ago, Jarin said:

That's a reason it would be ideal for it to change, but not a reason to expect it.

We agree on that. I expect it because they would suffer from keeping radio silence, but maybe my assertions are false, or maybe they won't care about the damage

[Jarin]

10 minutes ago, Baleine said:

I wouldn't dismiss the trusting issue so fast, but I guess we'll have an answer about the severity of the problem soon enough.

Yeah, we're in a bit of a limbo zone here between the preview and release. Even in a best-case scenario, they're scrambling to clean up what they can before tomorrow. I'm not going to start really crying about the sky falling until a bit after release, to see where we stand with features and hotfixes. I'm just old and salty.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Jarin

[GigFiz]

Regarding the assertion that it reflects badly on Intercept for not communicating better (or at all) about things, especially these (types of) issues, the question it raises for me is: do they have a choice? I cannot answer this, I am not in that industry or an adjacent one, but it seems to me that Take Two could/would assert some level of control about what information they allow Intercept to release. Especially if money is the driving force, it seems quite possible that Take Two has prohibited them from telling us anything that might look too negative/drive people away/hurt sales/etc. Radio silence creates its own issues for sure, but they could easily believe that no information is better than bad information. And sure, it's coming up now, but that is mitigated by the start of early access: these are definitely valid concerns, but it seems likely that it would be even more of a publicity hit if this conversation was happening while release was still nebulous, or had been pushed back again.

Not saying this exonerates everyone/everything, but just thought for food, because who knows what their contract actually allows them to say

Edited February 23, 2023 by GigFiz
wording

[VlonaldKerman]

After thinking some more on this, I can't help but return to the following tin-foil-hat theory that I don't really know how to evaluate/assess the validity of.

KSP 2 was initially supposed to release in 2020, and they announced it in 2019, something like 8 months prior to the supposed release date. Judging by what we have now, there is a 0% chance that they believed they could make a 2020 deadline. 0 %. Therefore, there was either intentional deception on T2's part, or incredible delusion.

The overly cynical part of my brain can't help but wonder if the thought process on T2's part was: Hype up the game for 2020 release --> Delay multiple times, thus blueballing the very dedicated, loyal KSP community --> Said loyal community will be willing to buy an unfinished very early access game in 2-3 years for $50 --> T2 makes large profit without having to fully fund a risky, technologically challenging project through to completion.

Not sure how likely this is to be true, BUT if I was T2, and I was looking to exploit a loyal fanbase and make a quick $$$ AND I knew this would work... I would go for it, no? Or, put differently: if lots of people buy the EA for $50, how strong really is their incentive to finish the game (their = T2).

Again, not saying this is what is actually happening, and if it is, the dev team isn't even really to blame. But can't shake the thought.

Edited February 23, 2023 by VlonaldKerman