Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[WuphonsReach]

Moving straight to 1.0 is a foolish move -- they will get slammed by the press for every little thing that should have been fixed during another balance / bug-fix pass.

It needs at least a 0.91 release addressing balance issues and bugs and a 0.99 release which contains all of the major features / overhauls that they are planning prior to release.

[asheft]

I was just looking back at the original Beta than Ever blog post from October, and I saw this:

Q: How long until 1.0 now, then?

A: That’s a very good question, but I’m afraid it’s kind of the same as asking ‘when is the next release coming?’.

In fact, it's exactly the same as asking that! The reason I was looking at the post was to remind myself of what their plan was three months ago. It seems so strange that in that blog post they were sounding like there were going to be several beta releases and they had a long way to go. Three months later, it's no beta releases and they are so close that 1.0 is only one update away. I am just wondering what could have caused that shift in attitude... It's very odd.

[FlowerChild]

Oh, I care... But I also recognize that this is not my circus and these are not my monkeys.

You don't seem to be making a comment on this particular thread here, more one against providing any kind of feedback whatsoever about the game, which clearly defeats the point of early access.

Your "why should I care?" could just as easily apply to any aspect of the game. Some of us do, some of us don't, and some of us probably care about some aspects, while not at all about others. Not much point in arguing that those of us that do care about this particular topic, shouldn't (or care as much), given these forums are here to serve as a place to discuss the game for those of us that care enough about it to do so.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[rynak]

The inherent problem with this analogy is that Harvester and SQUAD are not children

You might want to check out how the idea of KSP was born.

[klgraham1013]

The reason I was looking at the post was to remind myself of what their plan was three months ago. It seems so strange that in that blog post they were sounding like there were going to be several beta releases and they had a long way to go. Three months later, it's no beta releases and they are so close that 1.0 is only one update away. I am just wondering what could have caused that shift in attitude... It's very odd.

It could possibly be a budget concern. If that's the case, I think the community would understand. It would just take Squad giving an honest statement on the matter.

[Gus]

I think Squad has pushed things forward so they can get a free ride on the Dawn and New Horizons hype train.

[GoSlash27]

You don't seem to be making a comment on this particular thread here, more one against providing any kind of feedback whatsoever about the game, which clearly defeats the point of early access.

Your "why should I care?" could just as easily apply to any aspect of the game. Some of us do, some of us don't, and some of us probably care about some aspects, while not at all about others. Not much point in arguing that those of us that do care about this particular topic, shouldn't (or care as much), given these forums are here to discuss the game for those of us that care enough about it to do so.

Good eye.

My question isn't directed at whether or not people should "care", but whether they are justified in throwing a hissyfit about this.

So far, I haven't seen any reason to justify or engage in this behavior.

Personally, I'm a bit apprehensive about going open on the next release. Not because they haven't added enough, but because they're about to unveil a complete rework to the aerodynamics and a total part rebalancing without beta testing.

I'm all for "providing feedback", and I've provided plenty myself. I'm just not for dictating to the devs how they should do their job. KSP is *their* baby, not yours and not mine.

Best,

-Slashy

[Hanuman]

You might want to check out how the idea of KSP was born.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with an analogy that compares them to children -now-. They are not children, and attempting to dictate to them like a parent would is only going to end in failure. No one appreciates that kind of behavior.

[asheft]

It could possibly be a budget concern. If that's the case, I think the community would understand. It would just take Squad giving an honest statement on the matter.

The thing is, Maxmaps said in his AMA a while back (I think) that we had no reason to be concerned about them ending development due to a lack of funds. And he made a similar statement recently after the 1.0 announcement. I guess it's a possibility, but I don't see why they would be so unwilling to share that. I would definitely be a lot less negative of their decision, and I'm guessing most of the rest of the community would too, like you said.

[rynak]

The thing is, Maxmaps said in his AMA a while back (I think) that we had no reason to be concerned about them ending development due to a lack of funds. And he made a similar statement recently after the 1.0 announcement.

Phrasing might be important here. If i recall correctly (please point out if this is wrong), he said there are no commercial reasons for the decision.

SQUAD have a track record of bending terms. Sales revenue obviously would count as a commercial reason. An impatient investor however, might not by their definition.

[razark]

They are not children...

I wonder if the point of the analogy was not about children, and more about people that say something is ready?

[Robotengineer]

Good eye.

My question isn't directed at whether or not people should "care", but whether they are justified in throwing a hissyfit about this.

So far, I haven't seen any reason to justify or engage in this behavior.

Personally, I'm a bit apprehensive about going open on the next release. Not because they haven't added enough, but because they're about to unveil a complete rework to the aerodynamics and a total part rebalancing without beta testing.

I'm all for "providing feedback", and I've provided plenty myself. I'm just not for dictating to the devs how they should do their job. KSP is *their* baby, not yours and not mine.

Best,

-Slashy

I agree with FlowerChild, feedback is the point of early access, and if they wanted to keep their game under wraps until it it was finished that would have been fine. But they chose to go the early access route, and I believe that is a good choice, it allows for feedback, allows for modders to become free-ish content creators, to build a community so that when you do go gold, word of mouth has already got the message out. While KSP may be their child, it is the Kommunity that has provided the ability for that child to thrive.

[basic.syntax]

Phrasing might be important here. If i recall correctly (please point out if this is wrong), he said there are no commercial reasons for the decision.

SQUAD have a track record of bending terms. Sales revenue obviously would count as a commercial reason. An impatient investor however, might not by their definition.

Maxmaps seems to answer any financial concern (none) quite clearly, in this post earlier in this thread.

[FlowerChild]

My question isn't directed at whether or not people should "care", but whether they are justified in throwing a hissyfit about this.

So far, I haven't seen any reason to justify or engage in this behavior.

And I haven't seen much in the way of hissyfits

Personally, I'm a bit apprehensive about going open on the next release. Not because they haven't added enough, but because they're about to unveil a complete rework to the aerodynamics and a total part rebalancing without beta testing.

That's basically how I feel about it (also concerned about resource mining being added as an entirely new system), and I think many others that are concerned in this thread view it that way as well.

The only thing I'd really like to see is at least one real beta (as in feature complete, not whatever 0.9 was) public release, or some kind of public experimentals phase to ensure the game isn't overly buggy, and somewhat reasonably balanced, at release. I personally get the impression that Squad may have a rather distorted view of the stability of their own game, and an overly optimistic view of how much time is required to balance a game, and I don't think the usual experimentals process is sufficient to test a release candidate when new features are still being added.

I do think that a certain amount of nervousness is in order given how unstable Squad's releases tend to be. My impression is that the game has actually been getting more unstable with each of the past few versions, which is pretty alarming for a game that we're now told is about to release.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[rynak]

Maxmaps seems to answer any financial concern (none) quite clearly, in this post earlier in this thread.

Thank you. Okay, this is rather weird then. Either there is some mysterious reason, or they indeed think they can do all this stuff in just 3-4 months, do it well and do bugfixing and optimization. Or, bugfixing and optimization is not part of what they consider a requirement to be "release ready".

What is a bit strange is, how suddenly the agenda seemed to change after 0.25. Out of the blue, a jump from 0.25 to 0.90 was announced, and called beta. Then after just one so called "beta" (which might just have been an excuse to say "we did a beta", without actually doing it), they announce release. Basically, it looks as if after 0.25, someone decided "We need to get this out ASAP, just one further version, then release". Someone else replied "But, we call this alpha right now - would it not seem strange, to go straight from alpha to release?" "Fine, let's just call the interim version beta."

[klgraham1013]

I'm all for "providing feedback", and I've provided plenty myself. I'm just not for dictating to the devs how they should do their job.

There's a fine line here. I'd say many of us have provided valid "feedback" as to why KSP is not ready for 1.0. Labeling it as a hissyfit is demeaning to many of us with valid concerns. If you'd care to critique my concerns, that's fine. Being high-and-mighty, and making claims that we shouldn't care won't sway any of us to your side of the argument.

- - - Updated - - -

What is a bit strange is, how suddenly the agenda seemed to change after 0.25. Out of the blue, a jump from 0.25 to 0.90 was announced, and called beta. Then after just one so called "beta" (which might just have been an excuse to say "we did a beta", without actually doing it), they announce release. Basically, it looks as if after 0.25, someone decided "We need to get this out ASAP, just one further version, then release". Someone else replied "But, we call this alpha right now - would it not seem strange, to go straight from alpha to release?" "Fine, let's just call the interim version beta."

The jump from 0.25 to 0.90 was fine in my opinion. It was merely a statement of intent to move beyond alpha and into beta. The jump to 1.0 seems very drastic, as it seems to have come so suddenly. The impression I got from the Beta Than Ever blog, was that beta would last for some time. Not four more years, but, perhaps, as long as a year.

1.0 has very definitive connotations to the average consumer. If expectations are not meet, it can lead to the perception of KSP being tarnished.

[FlowerChild]

What is a bit strange is, how suddenly the agenda seemed to change after 0.25. Out of the blue, a jump from 0.25 to 0.90 was announced, and called beta. Then after just one so called "beta" (which might just have been an excuse to say "we did a beta", without actually doing it), they announce release. Basically, it looks as if after 0.25, someone decided "We need to get this out ASAP, just one further version, then release". Someone else replied "But, we call this alpha right now - would it not seem strange, to go straight from alpha to release?" "Fine, let's just call the interim version beta."

I agree that something strange is occurring and that Squad seems to have suddenly changed course, but I don't agree on the particulars. If you reference this post that Harvester made when first talking about the decision to go beta:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/313-Beta-Than-Ever-The-Future-of-KSP

It's implied in several places, but particularly here:

I’m still concerned this means you’re going to abandon KSP.

A: We know, and this is why we’re doing this announcement now. We want to give everyone as much early notice as possible about what’s coming up, so nobody runs into any surprises. We’re not even in Beta yet actually. There’s still the next update to go, and after that, a period of Beta updates until 1.0, and even after that, we still have more stuff planned. So worry not, we’re going to be at it for quite a while.

That they intended for there to be multiple beta releases, and not just the one not-even-a-beta that we got. So I don't get the impression they planned the beta release just to move straight to 1.0, more that they just decided to go straight to 1.0 sometime in the past little while.

[pellinor]

What is a bit strange is, how suddenly the agenda seemed to change after 0.25. Out of the blue, a jump from 0.25 to 0.90 was announced, and called beta. Then after just one so called "beta" (which might just have been an excuse to say "we did a beta", without actually doing it), they announce release. Basically, it looks as if after 0.25, someone decided "We need to get this out ASAP, just one further version, then release". Someone else replied "But, we call this alpha right now - would it not seem strange, to go straight from alpha to release?" "Fine, let's just call the interim version beta."

I agree. When large acceleration happens, a large force is at work. And if the new direction seems dubious from a developer's perspective, it smells like external pressure that people are not allowed to talk about.

[GoSlash27]

There's a fine line here. I'd say many of us have provided valid "feedback" as to why KSP is not ready for 1.0. Labeling it as a hissyfit is demeaning to many of us with valid concerns. If you'd care to critique my concerns, that's fine. Being high-and-mighty, and making claims that we shouldn't care won't sway any of us to your side of the argument.

It's not nearly as "fine" as you make it out to be.

"Providing feedback" means relaying your impressions/ thoughts/ concerns. "Throwing a hissyfit" is dictating to them what they should or should not do. It is not your place or mine to demand of the Devs when or if they choose to go open release. It is not your place or mine to demand explanations about their business decisions. And frankly it seems silly to

seeing as how KSP is already a huge financial success and has a robust mod/ development community already in place.

Something to keep in mind: We paid them to give us early access to a game in development. We had a fun time with it. They accepted our feedback to improve it. As nice as they have been about all of this, *they* do not owe *us* anything.

Best,

-Slashy

[Bill Phil]

Actually, Squad does owe is something, it's called a product, and it's known as KSP. Squad owes us a product of decent value, as well as other things, which they have provided. In return, we owe squad concern about the product. That is what is happening here.

[FlowerChild]

"Providing feedback" means relaying your impressions/ thoughts/ concerns. "Throwing a hissyfit" is dictating to them what they should or should not do.

I dunno man. I would tend to think it's more along the lines of repeatedly posting to a thread while maintaining they don't care about the topic at hand, and using animated gifs and dismissive terms like "hissy fit" to belittle those that have a different point of view.

seeing as how KSP is already a huge financial success

Source?

[bv1]

It seems to me that someone has a gun to Squad's head. I can't think of any other reason that they would have only one beta release before going to the final release.

Edited January 25, 2015 by bv1

[Yellowburn10]

It seems most of the posts I've read that said KSP isn't ready for 1.0 are from people who aren't saying it for their own sake, but for squad's. They say things like "We don't want to see the game flop as it goes gold," or "It's going too fast, all these new features will need more testing." I don't blame them at all, I'd hate to see the game flop too. But I feel that squad wouldn't have decided to go to 1.0 if they weren't sure of themselves if they could. They know as well as we do that this is a massive undertaking with big risks attached, but if they feel they can handle it, I'm not gonna stop them.

And just for reference, back when Minecraft reached version 1.0, there were still plenty of problems to be fixed and features that could of been added before then, but last time I checked the game wasn't a flop. Why would it be different for KSP?

Edited January 25, 2015 by Yellowburn10

[FlowerChild]

And just for reference, back when Minecraft reached version 1.0, there were still plenty of problems to be fixed and features that could of been added before then, but last time I checked the game wasn't a flop. Why would it be different for KSP?

KSP is nowhere on the scale of Minecraft man. That thing had attained such a critical mass before the official release that nothing was going to slow it down, even a botched 1.0 release (and it was fairly botched, being an obvious rush job that suggested the creator was sick of working on it).

I don't think anything is really on the scale of Minecraft and Notch has the Hollywood hills estate to prove it.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Yellowburn10]

KSP is nowhere on the scale of Minecraft man. That thing had attained such a critical mass before the official release that nothing was going to slow it down, even a botched 1.0 release

While KSP may not have the massive community as Minecraft does, it still does have a pretty big and supportive community as evidence of us talking about this right now. I just put that out here to show a botched 1.0 doesn't mean the end of the world.