Publicly Viewable Development Wishlist/Roadmap

[regex]

I may have argued against this in the past for various reasons, but I feel like it's a really good thing to bring up now that we're nearing "Scope Completion". This ties in to several user's complaints of too little/poor communication from the development team, which I think really needs to be addressed.

There are a lot of gaps in KSP's feature set that really need (subject to local opinion) to be filled and the user base has no idea whatsoever what the future holds for many of them. It would be Really Nice if the community had some sort of idea what the possible long-term goals of the KSP dev team are. I'm talking official here, not some fan-updated wiki page or image that may or may not have a basis in reality. It doesn't have to be concrete; put a big disclaimer at the top stating "All Items Subject To Change At Any Time". The point being, though, that a lot of frustration around the forums boils down to the complete lack of any sort of dev roadmap. Honestly, some of us would love to know if fixing the stock aerodynamics is even being considered by the devs, for instance.

[r4pt0r]

rated 5 stars.

if they include the "All Items Subject To Change At Any Time" disclaimer i dont see why they couldnt. we just want to know whats coming. for example is squad even interested in a GP2 anymore? reentry heat?

Edited July 17, 2014 by r4pt0r

[LethalDose]

Dare to dream.

I wonder what excuse they'll use to lock this thread.

[stupid_chris]

I wonder what excuse they'll use to lock this thread.

Aren't you a little zealous there.

I'm not sure it would be a good idea. If I'm not mistaken, it was this way a long time ago, and stopped when the community grew too large, as people started to demand things and complain heavily everytime something didn't go according to plan. As the game approaches scope completetion, the community is likely to become even larger and much more excited about the future completion of the game. Keeping some sort of log like this might be rather time consuming, and I'm not sure how much it might affect development. Not only that, but as we've seen in the recent past, some people react very very badly to some features being crossed out in favour of others, and I don't think anyone wants stuff like that to happen again.

I'm not completely against, but I can see it doing more harm than good.

[regex]

I'm not sure it would be a good idea. If I'm not mistaken, it was this way a long time ago, and stopped when the community grew too large, as people started to demand things and complain heavily everytime something didn't go according to plan. As the game approaches scope completetion, the community is likely to become even larger and much more excited about the future completion of the game. Keeping some sort of log like this might be rather time consuming, and I'm not sure how much it might affect development. Not only that, but as we've seen in the recent past, some people react very very badly to some features being crossed out in favour of others, and I don't think anyone wants stuff like that to happen again.

Basically SQUAD is commited to making the game their way but is too afraid to tell us what their way is because the community is, apparently, volatile.

[Superfluous J]

It's not that they're afraid, it's that we've not shown we deserve it.

(I'm of course not speaking on behalf of Squad. This is my own opinion. As a group we've shown that any information we get about the game causes us to explode violently)

[stupid_chris]

Basically SQUAD is commited to making the game their way but is too afraid to tell us what their way is because the community is, apparently, volatile.

Woah there, I'm not Squad. That is /my/ opinion here

But no, that's not how I see it. Features come and go without a warning, and I'm not seeing a real advantage to knowing every little step that undergoes for that. Last December was painful for literally everyone, I'd rather not have to witness anything like that again as a member of the community.

[Phawks]

I haven't posted to the forums for almost a year. I personally hate what the community has become and the change in direction (or lack of direction) I've seen in the development process.

Don't get me wrong. I love KSP. I've been playing a lot lately because I found mods that made it fun again. But every time I come here to lurk, I get pissed off.

Squad,

I understand game development is an arduous task. I get that. I can't argue with that. But from the weekly development logs, I have one key thing to say: stop marketing the game and just build it already. I know Squad is an advertisement company (and judging from its website KSP is the only reason it still exists) first and foremost but this development team needs to get with the program. I know C7 leaving was a major blow to development. And I know the circumstances surrounding that departure were probably a lot darker than was let on. Whatever beef is being ground up behind the scenes needs to get grilled and eaten. This is too good of a thing for you all to be stupid and waste it. Get some direction and get some transparency. You don't have to go open source, although that would make KSP even better than it ever could be otherwise, but you need to communicate with the community. Not these devblogs that are a chore and superficial in nature, although I do admit that they are far better than what was going on previously, but rather opening up the repositories and commit histories. Let us see the actual progress being made even if you think it'll just bore us. There are plenty of technically fluent people around here to translate them for the uneducated masses that now dominate the community. The only reason a majority of your paying customers don't regret their purchase is because of the mod community. I'm glad I bought KSP back at 0.18. I wouldn't buy it now having seen what I've seen.

TL;DR

1) Stop marketing a product and just make the damn product.

2) Get your priorities straight.

3) Share those priorities and your progress with the community.

4) Stop acting like you're EA and have to focus on PR and project secrecy. You're an indie developer with a product that already has the eyes of the world. Go look at teams who don't alienate chunks of their communities and learn some things. Go look at a game called Tremulous if you want to see what happens when you split the community and start losing key developers.

Edited July 17, 2014 by vexx32
Profanity

[regex]

It's not that they're afraid, it's that we've not shown we deserve it.

That's a load. Seriously, every game has its community members that explode or gripe at any indication that the development is not going the way they imagine. Besides, doesn't KSP have this vaunted "community" that is so great and that SQUAD so appreciates?

But no, that's not how I see it. Features come and go without a warning, and I'm not seeing a real advantage to knowing every little step that undergoes for that.

No one is asking for every little step. Some indication of what the developers would like to achieve would be nice, though. What is entailed in making the game "scope complete"? All we know is that there are a set of features that will complete it. What features are those? What features are being considered for polish later?

These aren't tough questions and they don't have to be set in stone.

Edited July 17, 2014 by regex

[Superfluous J]

That's a load. Seriously, every game has its community members that explode or gripe at any indication that the development is not going the way they imagine. Besides, doesn't KSP have this vaunted "community" that is so great and that SQUAD so appreciates?

Honestly I don't think so. I love these forums and there are a LOT of GREAT people on them (yourself included, and hopefully me as well) but the common sense and IQ level of the boards sinks to subzero on very frequent occasions.

But anyway that's beside the point. The important thing really is that it would take work with no benefit. Anything on that road map would be subject to change at any time, so they'd just have this thing they have to keep updating - taking time and effort to undo all the time and effort they did before to set it up - and then deal with hundreds of people complaining that when someone changed the grammar of a sentence in a certain node of the road map that it caused them to think that some part of their own favorite idea was going to be implemented in a slightly different way than what they wanted.

I much prefer "Hey, 0.24 is coming. We're going to have contracts!" and leave it at that.

[Skyrunner27]

Basically SQUAD is commited to making the game their way but is too afraid to tell us what their way is because the community is, apparently, volatile.

The fear is real if I remember back during the .19 release a big issue came to the community that put up a wall between us and the devs.

(Cue flashback music)

It was around the beginning of last year. Squad had been announcing the coming of the .19 update. If you followed the update information during the dev information they had announced three things to come in the update. They were rentry, rover wheels, and resources. In the final days before the release the devs announced that resources wouldn't make it. People not as informed kept on thinking resources were coming. On release many people were outraged at the lack of resource system hope remained high for the release of resources in the next update. The next update came and past people said the devs were driving the game into the ground. The anger in the community grew. Actually, I feel like I should mention that Squad did put out the disclaimer that anything could change. Anyway the issue blew up again shortly after the release of .21. Yes the community got very volatile because they changed their plans. The resource issue also happened to come around DLCgate which basically shut down all information given to the public.

TL;DR: The issue has come up before.

Edit: I typed this before you typed your second comment

[regex]

Honestly I don't think so. I love these forums and there are a LOT of GREAT people on them (yourself included, and hopefully me as well) but the common sense and IQ level of the boards sinks to subzero on very frequent occasions.

You probably have a point there; the EVE-O boards rarely sank below zero, if ever.

Also, you're pretty cool, I'm your #1 silent fan.

But anyway that's beside the point. The important thing really is that it would take work with no benefit. Anything on that road map would be subject to change at any time, so they'd just have this thing they have to keep updating - taking time and effort to undo all the time and effort they did before to set it up - and then deal with hundreds of people complaining that when someone changed the grammar of a sentence in a certain node of the road map that it caused them to think that some part of their own favorite idea was going to be implemented in a slightly different way than what they wanted.

I much prefer "Hey, 0.24 is coming. We're going to have contracts!" and leave it at that.

The sad thing is that every developer keeps those sorts of notes. Tarn Adams keeps them, other inde (how the hell do you spell that?) developers keep them, and even I have a long list of stuff to do that I have to face every morning, and when I was doing full-time open-source stuff I kept an internal and external list. It takes very little time to update that sort of thing. As for the griping, there are tons of mods to keep the disappointed happy, and knowledge of future intentions could potentially drum up additional dev support for the popular mods that will never be stock.

[r4pt0r]

how hard is it to make an official one of these? http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features

they need not describe every detail, just lay out plans.

they have to have plans right? a vision for the game?

just let our kommunity manager broadcast those plans via a sticky thread or the daily kerbal.

[GluttonyReaper]

I'm fairly neutral on this matter, but I thought it would be worth bringing up that this appears to be an approach that Squad has attempted before, disclaimer and all:

And it's certainly true that many users were ... less than happy when none of this chart ended up applying, complaining about "broken promises", or whatever. Whether or not such a thing is acceptable or not, both to Squad and the community, is what I'm assuming is the cause of debate here.

[r4pt0r]

to be fair that looks like an over complicated un-fun mess. we just want points. not details

[GluttonyReaper]

to be fair that looks like an over complicated un-fun mess. we just want points. not details

I think that's beside the point. Forgetting what the diagram entails, it is what is being suggested here (at least, I think it is - feel free to correct me), which is an idea of what was being planned in the future. The useful thing about this is that we can get a clear idea of the effects of releasing future plans, what with the reactions of the community being somewhere in this forum (this was after the April events, right?). As such, it means won't have to guess to the pros and cons - we can look at what has happened previously.

[regex]

I think that's beside the point. Forgetting what the diagram entails, it is what is being suggested here (at least, I think it is - feel free to correct me), which is an idea of what was being planned in the future. The useful thing about this is that we can get a clear idea of the effects of releasing future plans, what with the reactions of the community being somewhere in this forum (this was after the April events, right?). As such, it means won't have to guess to the pros and cons - we can look at what has happened previously.

Not really. There's a big difference between the word "resources" in a list and a diagram showing exactly how resources will work within the game. There was also likely a lot of subtlety of wording that was missed upon unveiling that diagram ("This is our idea for the future", for instance), but I wasn't around then. Anyway, the intent is not for the devs to detail their entire day out, but to see what features are envisioned for the game. Is an aerodynamic overhaul being considered? Will ISRU ever be added? Reentry heating/overhaul? Life support? More planets? Extra EVA activities? A goals list, if you will, that is more specific than "it'll be awesome."

[LethalDose]

Aren't you a little zealous there.

HA! Said the kettle(s) to the pot...

And there ways to incorporate resource collection/ISRU that aren't an uncomplicated mess. ANd many of us (at least myself) were not so much upset that they scrapped it, but more that they tried to ignore it away, and gave an absurd excuse (just because the one way you tried to implement resources didn't work doesn't mean that it's impossible or even particularly difficult).

Edited July 17, 2014 by LethalDose

[MR4Y]

A bunch of men can only dream about that, really.

Keep in mind how many people have complained about this already and what reactions happened ( mine doesn't count for reasons you well know ). From the usual rain of fanboys to thread locking "because of derailling" ( which also happens to be on the top 5 list of reasons mods state to lock threads ). Apparently, some improvement has happened. A little video here. A FAQ there. In practice, those things are...not really necessary and seldom seem like SQUAD answering the pleas for transparency that transpire.

As my usual self, I'll argument that there's no roadmap, at least no roadmap we can see.

[GluttonyReaper]

Not really. There's a big difference between the word "resources" in a list and a diagram showing exactly how resources will work within the game. There was also likely a lot of subtlety of wording that was missed upon unveiling that diagram ("This is our idea for the future", for instance), but I wasn't around then. Anyway, the intent is not for the devs to detail their entire day out, but to see what features are envisioned for the game. Is an aerodynamic overhaul being considered? Will ISRU ever be added? Reentry heating/overhaul? Life support? More planets? Extra EVA activities? A goals list, if you will, that is more specific than "it'll be awesome."

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure the devs even know what's being added beyond scope completion. Although it would be nice to know what exactly they believe falls under that category, I think the biggest issue is that Squad doesn't really want to deal with the complaints of people wanting their specific features in the game. I suppose it's far easier to just not tell the community - people can't complain about features not being considered if they don't know if they are being considered or not (although, to be fair, they do it anyway. ) Then again, I can see such a list being very handy for modders - Extra EVA not even being considered for future updates? Better make a mod for it then. Although, again, seeing updates being planned for the future may discourage modders from adding features in the vein of "It's going to be stock anyway, so why bother?" Or perhaps the exact opposite, I don't really know. It's all quite confusing, especially with Squad choosing to reveal certain features, namely multiplayer (I suspect that may have been a way of softening the blow of resources being shelved though). And I'm still not sure how it would affect the marketing side of things. Do people like being randomly given features they weren't expecting? Or would they prefer to know a long time beforehand?

[Beeman]

Still want them resources >.>

Anyways, having a basic roadmap wouldn't be a terrible idea. Doesn't need to be too detailed for now, just have a basic outline for some of the things they intend to implement before release. Like, one point on the roadmap would be an aerodynamics update or rework while another might be the multiplayer shenanigans they've been working on in the background with a brief(one paragraph or thereabouts) description of each, you know? That'd be more than adequate.

Then again, wasn't there a list of planned features on a wiki somewheres? What ever happened to that, I wonder >.>

[GluttonyReaper]

Then again, wasn't there a list of planned features on a wiki somewheres? What ever happened to that, I wonder >.>

It's still here: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features

It's not particularly useful though, seeing as it is entirely community maintained, and at a glance, it's easy to see that most of it is without sources, so who knows what's actually true?

[Sky_walker]

Implement some good practices known from other projects like a roadmap or planned features list?!

impossible.

lol

[MR4Y]

Agreed with the OP.

(Hopefully this is SFW...)

[Ippo]

I agree completely. Knowing what features are considered would be absolutely great, even without knowing when.

We just need a list, not a detailed roadmap.