No update this weekend.

[RaBDawG]

This is kinda getting funny it’s so embarrassing.  They are literally going to wait three weeks for a patch? 
 

Assuming  they actually release this patch next week which doesn’t even add content or fix the major bugs.  

Edited March 10, 2023 by RaBDawG

[TLTay]

They're waiting at least until the two week refund window has passed (probably three weeks in case of late purchasers), in case someone was holding out hope that a patch would make things better and wanted to give them time to fix it. 

Your goodwill shall not go unpunished! This may be Kerbal... but it's T2 Kerbal now!

(Possibly sarcasm, but I'm not sure anymore)

Edited March 10, 2023 by TLTay

[Superfluous J]

So you're mad at them about the patch not fixing any bugs AND that it's not coming fast enough?

"The food tasted terrible! And the portions were too small!"

[LameLefty]

20 minutes ago, RaBDawG said:

This is kinda getting funny it’s so embarrassing.  They are literally going to wait three weeks for a patch? 
 

Assuming  they actually release this patch next week which doesn’t even add content or fix the major bugs.  

Was there an announcement to this end somewhere today? 

[Bej Kerman]

19 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

So you're mad at them about the patch not fixing any bugs AND that it's not coming fast enough?

"The food tasted terrible! And the portions were too small!"

"The food was rushed and undercooked! The food took too long to get to us!" is the vibe I am currently getting from this fandom, which only seems to care about development flamingo-ups so long as the developers aren't squad.

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

Was there an announcement to this end somewhere today? 

My thoughts exactly.  Was there an announcement about when we would or would not get a patch?

[Stoup]

It was mentioned in the discord dev tracker that it won't be this week. Beyond that no specifics. We are getting some news tomorrow, however! Dakota described it as medium-sized, if that's any help

Edited March 10, 2023 by Stoup

[RocketRockington]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

"The food was rushed and undercooked! The food took too long to get to us!" is the vibe I am currently getting from this fandom, which only seems to care about development flamingo-ups so long as the developers aren't squad.

"The food at this 3star restaurant took 6 hours for you to make!  You told me it would be ready 3 hours ago.  You told me it would be the best meal I ever had!  That's why I kept sitting here waiting!  And it's undercooked!  And overpriced! And its worse than I can have right going to the food stand that has the food ready already!" is a more apt analogy.

It comes down to whether the expectations are not justified.  And the people who think it's ok to charge $50 for the garbage that got released after the years of delays - enjoy the slop that you got. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by RocketRockington

[LameLefty]

7 minutes ago, Stoup said:

It was mentioned in the discord dev tracker that it won't be this week. Beyond that no specifics. We are getting some news tomorrow, however! Dakota described it as medium-sized, if that's any help

It would be really nice if the Forum got the same information as that bubbling fount of unfiltered ADHD-fueled jibber jabber.

Edited March 10, 2023 by LameLefty

[Stoup]

In fairness, there's definitely been an effort to consolidate the most relevant info from the discord into one specific channel. It's not a perfect solution, but it does mean you don't have to trawl the whole thing over. And besides, for short little tidbits of info like that, would it really be appropriate to create new forum threads? There's gonna be a thread tomorrow with that info, I'm sure

[RaBDawG]

I mean look what SOF2 just released and these games launched the exact same time, they have done 3 big fix patches and already a major update and we are still blowing up when we decouple.  

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1326470/view/3680042425366182429?l=english

[RocketRockington]

57 minutes ago, RaBDawG said:

I mean look what SOF2 just released and these games launched the exact same time, they have done 3 big fix patches and already a major update and we are still blowing up when we decouple.  

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1326470/view/3680042425366182429?l=english

That's what happens when you have a development process and release planning schedule that's functional.  It's clear KSP2s release was pushed out in whatever state they could manage to get it in, rather than any PR they posted about wanting community feedback and this being a considered move.

EA for KSP2 is a fig leaf to be able to release anything by the demanded FY2023 date by T2, rather than a real plan, and keep some of the fans on side despite its buggy and badly performing state.

Edited March 10, 2023 by RocketRockington

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I just watched @ShadowZone 's interview with Nate from just before release.*  SZ's presumption is that the developers knew what condition the game was in - and that 'management' (my word) rushed / set an arbitrary date for them to release to EA.  It had to go out on the date come hell or high water.  And it did.

Nate mentions the one thing that will likely be the biggest performance enhancement: refining the  PQS System.  (The Planet Making System)  Given that that is likely a big overhaul, and my impression from the interview is that it was an ongoing project before the release... I don't expect it to be part of the first patch.  It could be; I just don't expect it.  He did talk about the process: Find the biggest resource hog, tame it; find the next biggest.  Those actually sounded like two parallel processes - Taming PQS is a long term, not easily solved thing that is a work in progress - the other is regular refinement.  So I would expect some performance enhancement with the patch... just not likely to be the one that causes FPS drops like those from looking at space as the background vs a planetary body as the background.

Another thing from the video that comports with what I've seen over these last two weeks - there's a lot of stuff in this build that is wrong, that they could not have NOT known about.  So the likelihood is that the patch work isn't just 'look what these intrepid players discovered' it's also fixing stuff they've known about for a while.

Final note: while I've been doing my bug hunting and reporting stuff on the forums - I keep running into this line of thought where people are liquided that they haven't patched it yet.  I think that wishing for a rushed patch is counter productive.  My biggest gripe is how poorly the community interaction and contact has been.  I get that a project this big has a lot of moving parts and there is greater risk from rushing a bad update out too soon than there is from taking their time and putting out a well thought, well coded patch later.  I'm fine with that.  But they should be talking to us.

I've tried to explain this elsewhere - but let me try again.

The Communications Strategy seems to be PrivateDivision driven - by an expectation that they were releasing a fun-to-play and largely functional game that was awaiting some key elements of 1.0 to be polished, and those big content releases would be fed to players in the order outlined in the roadmap.  In other words, a functioning EA title.  They have Ghostii doing fun tik-toks and showcasing quirky builds, people on Twitter doing fun things and linking to positive articles, they're all over Discord where people can just spam thoughts and they get large numbers of bodies daily -- all of which would be acceptable if the game was what we expected (and likely what PD wrote their Communication Strategy around) : functioning, fun and awaiting key elements. 

That strategy would be fine if the game were as performant as other EA titles - like Satisfactory (for example).

The game did not release functioning like an EA title.  It released like an Alpha/Beta hybrid with a few EA elements.  You talk with Alpha/Beta players differently than you do with EA communities.  You acknowledge the bugs.  You collect the bugs - communicate priorities and tell the testers what you're working on.  You under promise and over deliver.  You don't ignore them - or keep up some semblance of your original marketing plan when the game is this buggy.

Case in point: Dakota's content

That's my beef.  They're not communicating with us in any way that reflects the reality of the game.  That failure of communication is actually accelerating the reputational harm.  Increasing the frustration.  They should be managing expectations - not ignoring them.

 

* Video Link

Edited March 10, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, RaBDawG said:

and we are still blowing up when we decouple.  

New player to the kerbal franchise;

'what do you mean with you put the engine and decoupler in the same stage, shouldn't that explode?' 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, TLTay said:

They're waiting at least until the two week refund window has passed (probably three weeks in case of late purchasers), in case someone was holding out hope that a patch would make things better and wanted to give them time to fix it. 

Your goodwill shall not go unpunished! This may be Kerbal... but it's T2 Kerbal now!

It's a sandbox mode.

Wait for the Career for proper funding.

[K^2]

4 hours ago, RaBDawG said:

They are literally going to wait three weeks for a patch?

I don't know where you're getting an expectation for a faster turnaround, but it's not from anything resembling a real world of a mid-size studio. 2 weeks of work + 1 week of testing is fast-tracking it.

[-dbv-]

I would have expected a day one patch and another one after 2-3 days just to fix the annoying small things like exploding decouplers. And yes, you can push out patches as soon as they are made. Now they are just prograstinating. It's literally been weeks without any seen work from the developers. And I don't trust this marketing/ PR repurposed bovine waste like"We are working hard on a fix" anymore. 

[Fullmetal Analyst]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

"The food was rushed and undercooked! The food took too long to get to us!" is the vibe I am currently getting from this fandom,

its more like the "we were waiting for a whole hour on our spaghetti already, and now they serve us burnt lasagna without bolgonese" kind of vibes

[RocketRockington]

18 minutes ago, -dbv- said:

I would have expected a day one patch and another one after 2-3 days just to fix the annoying small things like exploding decouplers. And yes, you can push out patches as soon as they are made. Now they are just prograstinating. It's literally been weeks without any seen work from the developers. And I don't trust this marketing/ PR repurposed bovine waste like"We are working hard on a fix" anymore. 

Probably a symptom of the whole project "We couldn't get enough done to be worth releasing it in 3 days... let's do a patch in one week." "We couldn't get enough done worth release in one week - let's push out a patch in two weeks".  etc, etc.  "We couldn't make a game worth releasing in 3 years - let's push it out another year!"

Maybe Take2 management will have to step in to force them to release even a patch.   Then the KSP2 hopefuls can talk about the patch being out too early when that patch adds new bugs.

Somewhat kidding with the above,   More seriously though - if their processes are not good enough to release a reasonable EA, there wasn't much hope they'd be releasing patches at a high cadence.  I guess we'll see what it contains when it actually lands - who knows, maybe it will fix most of the significant issues.

[p331083]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I just watched @ShadowZone 's interview with Nate from just before release.*  SZ's presumption is that the developers knew what condition the game was in - and that 'management' (my word) rushed / set an arbitrary date for them to release to EA.  It had to go out on the date come hell or high water.  And it did.

Yeah, its management's fault the devs cant produce something *playable* after 3 1/2 years.

Edited March 10, 2023 by p331083

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, -dbv- said:

Now they are just prograstinating. It's literally been weeks without any seen work from the developers.

Mhm.

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, -dbv- said:

I would have expected a day one patch and another one after 2-3 days just to fix the annoying small things like exploding decouplers. And yes, you can push out patches as soon as they are made.

Whilst I don't disagree, they can only really release a patch if they have one, and even then they need to be sure it works and doesn't cause other issues.

Frustrating though it is 'no patch' is better than 'rushed patch that makes thing worse'.

[Periple]

41 minutes ago, p331083 said:

Yeah, its management's fault the devs cant produce something *playable* after 3 1/2 years.

First off, once again, what we're seeing now is entirely reasonable and even pretty good for 3 1/2 years of work from a mid-sized studio. The only issue is that it was released to a public that expected something much more polished. And it is playable by any reasonable definition. I've been playing it for about 50 hours at this point, if it wasn't playable I wouldn't have been able to log even one hour.

Second, most of the time problems are the management's fault. No matter how good your developers are, they're not going to deliver to their full potential if the project isn't competently produced, the infrastructure isn't sufficient and competently maintained, and various team dynamics related things aren't competently taken care of. There are lots of cases when literal dream teams hand-picked from the world's best in their fields and given a great project to do just completely faceplanted.

I know it's all good fun to gripe about useless middle management and clueless producers and what have you but the fact is that nothing at a bigger scale than a 10-developer team could ever get done without them. And even with really good producers and managers, things will go wrong sometimes -- and then it's their job to put it right. It's a really hard job!

[Tazooka]

As per Discord. However we are expected to recieve some news

Edited March 10, 2023 by Tazooka
Merged

[MarcAbaddon]

Ultimately the management recruit and pick their technical leads so they are always responsible. To that extent I agree. But what I don't agree with it that being management being at fault means it Intercept is blameless and it's only Take Two to blame. I am not saying this is what specifically you said, but it's the vibe I get from a lot of people making similar arguments.

But Intercept has their own management too. And it's Intercept's management jobs to communicate expectations and projections to Take Two. It's easy to blame Take Two for pushing, but ultimately the game costs money and needs to make money then it costs. With the constant delays to the game it seems quite plausible to me that Intercept (and partially the same people at Star Theory before that) were constantly overpromising to Take Two. The entire Star Theory fiasco with the failed buyout wasn't something that happens everyday, nor is normal publisher behavior. It's easy to speculate what might have gone down there, but it's just speculation - in both directions, including speculations that the publisher is chiefly to blame. 

But I feel this is starting to go off-topic, so maybe let's back to the discussion about the patch. It's sad that the patch got delayed, but ultimately the contents are more important. Obviously however the expectations for the contents of a 3-week patch will be higher than for 1-week patch... 

Edited March 10, 2023 by MarcAbaddon