moeggz

Yup. It seems like from going through the colony mega thread it won’t approach in a meaningful way a culmination of career and science until the exploration update, after colonies and after interstellar. I like science points. And I like the expansion and better quality of the hand crafted missions in KSP2 over test x part in y situation of KSP1. But it’s not career mode at all until there is a gameplay reason to build efficient rockets. They say rockets won’t be “free” but only really talk about resources in regards to fuel and late tech tree parts. If there’s never a reason to use a SRB over a liquid fuel stack with an engine this game may not be for me. So until they communicate clearly about what resources will be needed for, and how the player will be credited them (ie please have some incentive to not timewarp for maximum resources) the best I can do is *hope* that “rockets won’t be free” includes some player incentives to build cheap and efficient. Thats three major updates down the road. For Science! was a big step forward but didn’t nudge me at all to play more after trying it for a few hours, or to update my negative review to a positive one. The CMs hyped that they have some good communication in the pipeline, so here I check the forums at lunch for a week or so to see if it’s worth me staying around. No news or bad news and I’ll be away from the forums and Reddit for months again.

This is post of the year and it’s April. Seriously this took a lot of work, and was done for the love of KSP for free and is so helpful for the entire community. I look forward to digging into it more tonight, but my quick skim showed where it was said that “launching rockets will not be free” this is the part that is still pretty vague to me, and seems that it will be vague for a long while yet until the resources update. And the comment that resource delivery routes will explicitly be based on duration makes me curious to how the devs will incentivize against wonton time warp, if such an incentive is even something they want to give. I just have a really hard time seeing how that doesn’t just leave the player with an “infinite resource” button just always in the game. For a player who really wants an in game reason to build efficient rockets, it just means it will probably be a while before the game will be fun to play for fun’s sake. But if communication starts picking up I’ll gladly play for the fun of thinking about the game and for feedback. Having this resource together now, going through all of the posts in one spot it does seem that some of my prior questions have been addressed either fully or partially, so thank you again. This is very helpful to get in mind all the communication up to this point.

Yes and no. Yes in that I mean something that’s periodical, not like every week. And yes that the CMs get to steer the feedback to what they want it on, instead of a sea of opinions on everything they narrow down it down to what they’re actually looking for. No in that I’m not suggesting a binding democratic like vote. A poll if they want but devs still have a way better handle on the cost of different decisions. They could just make some of these with community sentiment in mind. Also the mob votes are contentious because the losing side can still see how their vote could still be in the game. The different ways to prevent time warp abuse or at least incentivize against it are mostly either-or and not something you can do both simultaneously. I’m not really concerned that they go with my idea as a solution so much as there is a solution. But for these types of ongoing efforts they have on these different issues it could be made with the weight of both development cost and larger community sentiment, if we’re just told what to give feedback on. Id view it closer to what Hinterland did with the long dark when they asked where the community would rather they drive their efforts, and as such survival has gotten a lot more updates as that’s the direction the community requested. @Dakota as I see you’ve just replied, yeah I meant way more the last comment from discord that you posted than the mob vote type. I agree that type leads to just more infighting. Where I feel we can go this way or that way but obviously not both is less likely for that.

Unnecessarily combative phrasing of the post aside (if you’re looking for actual discourse that phrasing I don’t think helps. Paying for a server to host discussions about your game and hearing negativity can’t be easy, and they literally just listened to the community and in particular by making some of those criticisms more visible), since Mike said he’d want to look into this thread I want to share two concise points and some explanation below. 1. How will the foreseeable problem of “time warp to get infinite resources/science” be handled? 2. How will colonies and resources integrate into and build off of the foundation of For Science! ? In regards to 1, is it seen as a problem, has a solution been found or is one still in the works? I had made a post about limiting a VAB’s construction abilities to the number of unique supply routes set up by the player. This incentivizes going to new mining sites on multiple planets (which feedbacks into getting more science to get better parts to get more resources and so on.) if it’s timed to the in game clock, just time warp 1 billion seems to take away any incentive to make new bases, one per resource would be enough. Life support is another route, and the last post by Dakota had a surprisingly high amount of people ask for some form of life support. With the second point, a lot of the negative feedback regarding communication is because we don’t really know how to give feedback without knowing the direction of the game. I find For Science! as a great step forward, but lacking until there are some additional player restrictions beyond science points. There’s feedback I’d like to give, but without knowing what (and if) those additional restrictions will be it’s hard to. One assumes it will be tied to resources, but it doesn’t seem that IG is willing to share any info on how they will play into the game. Which is fine, but I would expect many to stay grumpy when that much is in the dark and the game is in early access. Some clarification on if this more broad idea type feedback is still wanted and helpful would smooth things over I think. If these things are set in stone and are being kept quiet for a surprise an indication that they’re not helpful will keep us from speaking into the wind. If they are helpful, you guys know where the undecided bits are- we don’t. If the devs wonder if more/enough players would prefer x feature/solution over y (say enough to make the time and effort to implement it worth it) open up and include us in the discussion. I would love to give feedback that can be specific enough to be actually helpful, even if I’m outvoted by other community members. That type of engagement, where the community is able to offer helpful insight that is applied to the game to make the game better for the majority seems to be what many are missing. Right now the feeling is really that just bug reporting and that level of feedback is desired. A CM launching a poll or discussion where they say “the team is working on x problem, would you rather us do y, z, or something else?” would be the absolute best thing to happen for community sentiment in a long time. You guys pick where large crowd feedback is helpful (I get that it’s often not, too many voices and too many contradictions) and then each of us gets to communicate a small part to the crowd response that can then hopefully be helpful. Also get the whole team more snacks and Dakota another monitor. The proper number of monitors at a workstation is always n+1.

Straight up a faith restoring move. I may be vocal and critical but I love this franchise and Dakota’ skill in CM has been a large part of me staying around. Will edit/update/ delete my Reddit post as appropriate when I get home. It’s being weird in mobile and not letting me edit the post in my phone.

@DakotaThank you for passing along our thoughts. We only ask that on topic, within rules, comments are not removed without justification. That thread had gotten messy and I sympathize with the thankless job of mods, I just wanted to say that more care should be taken that fair comments aren’t casualties of legitimate thread cleanup. It was so messy and so many comments removed it had seemed that one of your comments was removed as well, it wasn’t and I apologize for spreading that misunderstanding and seeing it be picked up. The relative position of your comment had just moved so much in the thread that I had missed it, so I do apologize for that. Thank you for listening to feedback, even the negative and for acting on and sharing the concerns I and others raised.

@PDCWolfYeah the off topic comments the last day and a half or so I get. I’m specifically referring to the on topic, within the rules, critical responses to the dev diary that were removed.

I don’t think he did. Some of his own comments were deleted. But the thread is unlocked and most of them remain deleted, so I think it’s appropriate to communicate clearly to Dakota how we as a community feel about that degree of moderation where opinions are silenced. edit strikeout inaccuracy. None of dakotas comments were removed

I’ve taken it to Dakota. I feel really the only option is if more people take this issue to the Discord so Dakota and Mike see it. Five pages were removed. Not just moved to the ea grand discussion thread straight up deleted. After a different mod had already been babysitting the thread and let those five pages stand.

@Fizzlebop Smith @herbal space program i hear both of you. I came back from my hiatus just to see if there was an update on the KERB. Saw the bloodbath and communicated it to Dakota. Like two comments were saved by him but a ton of on topic, not rude, criticism is still removed, a few comments hilariously so where the majority of the comment (the criticism) was removed but the short preamble listing what the commenter was appreciative was left giving an entirely misleading and entirely opposite depiction of the commenter’s response to the dev diary. I appreciate Dakota’s quick response and action but it’s hard to not get the impression that IG is ok with heavy handed and slanted moderation here, which just shows that my first response to that dev diary that I wanted to take a break from KSP2 interaction was correct.

This was a fine update if it was given without any preannouncement. This is a cool insight but, uh, not really what anyone is asking for more of when we’re asking for more communication. There was no reason this just couldn’t have been released; by pre announcing it (even with the disclaimer it wasn’t about colonies) you just set everyone up for disappointment. So guess I’m checking out for a few months again, hopefully the colony update is big enough to hit my home feed on Reddit. I think I’m done checking in on the subreddit and the forums for a while as it is a complete waste of my time at this point.

If the dev blog is “here’s how resources will affect progression” or literally just any information on what other restrictions the player must overcome beyond just science points I will be way less grumpy. For Science! (I still respect the !) is so clearly half a system without resources it’s hard to understand the direction this game is going. Would love just a broad stroke concept so I know if any feedback I have is useful, and to know if I want to stay invested in this game’s development or checkout for a year. For instance, if For Science! is 90% of the restrictions a player will face and the rest just affect colonies I think I’m ready to get off this ride.

Succinct. If the devs read anything in this thread I hope it’s what you said there. Not only are we upset about the lack of two way communication, we are very worried that the track of the game so far has just been to simplify.

By what metric is this game an EA launch except for the “don’t criticize us for its unfinished state?” I’m being serious. By the monetary metric it’s a full launch title, by how secretive the next major DLC roadmap update is it’s a full launch title as the community is not able to give any meaningful feedback or have any indication it’s being heard. The whole point of EA is not happening, every other EA I’ve been apart of at least acted like they listened to the community and let the community help shape the future of the game. Y’all (the ‘company’ as a whole including relevant parts of Take Two) aren’t even acting like that’s the case. By the pace of DLC updates it’s a full launch game with a full year before major changes, it’s not a rapidly developing EA game. After the rough launch I understood why you stopped talking. Had to show you could deliver to gain trust totally fair. But why are we getting even less coms now then we did then? For Science! was a big step in the right direction. A lot of us want to give the feedback you are overtly asking for. You all aren’t acting like you want it. If you want to just make the game you have in mind with no regards to community sentiment that’s fine but then it’s really duplicitous to say you launched in EA for that purpose when that’s not what was wanted, all that was wanted was to squeeze out all the cash from the loyal KSP2 fan base early. If that is the case I really wish you just launched a full 1.0 game. If it’s not, please start giving the community meaningful two way communication.

Gotta love the ever moving goal posts of “wait for the first patch” to “wait for For Science!” To now “wait for Colonies, wait no that won’t even have resources so wait for multiple major updates down the road” and that those will fix the game and make it great. Not may but will and you are unfairly negative if waiting that long after an already greatly delayed game that you paid near full price for isn’t something you’re interested in. I want KSP2 to succeed. It’s becoming tiring waiting while all feedback (the devs entire reason for EA) is met without any response. How resources/colonies factor into the gameplay loop is the reason for the game. It’s what differentiates it from the first. The fact that this far into the release and we can’t even be told in broad strokes how they will work tells me that those are still being decided. Which is frankly absurd and greatly different to the nearly finished game that they just want to get some feedback and tuning from the user base on in an EA launch. Also I don’t know how anyone could’ve read your post and gotten the impression you just didn’t understand how EA games work, your criticism was quite clear. This game so far has fixed KSP1’s janky complexity by just removing complexity entirely. Critiquing that doesn’t show a misunderstanding of the roadmap or EA in general, it shows your familiarity and appreciation for KSP1 and your worry about where KSP2 is headed.

The parts look cool! Any comment on when we could hear some information on what restrictions/considerations will be needed in the finished game in exploration mode? Ie is science points the only consideration or will resources limit the player in some way, and if so, how and how will mined resources be counted. Will it be binary resource availability, tied to in game clock, or tied to real game clock or some other solution?

I’ve just accepted the fact that the devs want to eat their cake and have it to. “It’s EA so be patient and understanding of the bugs.” And also “We’re going to act like the EA launch was a full product launch and upcoming ‘updates’ will be treated like upcoming DLC and we won’t give any specifics on them until they launch.” Launch an EA game to hide from criticism then treat your dev cycle and communications like your working on DLC for a finished game. They ostensibly are asking for feedback and say that EA was for feedback not funding but then do not listen to the feedback that is received. Worse, the future of the game is kept under such secrecy we can’t even give good feedback because we don’t know how anything will be implemented. Their treatment of com net occlusion and maneuver nodes makes me worried that their vision for a finished KSP2 may differ significantly from the view of a majority of the player base. They’ve proven me wrong before, so I’ll get back to waiting. But as Nate said he would be worried when criticism stoped because it’s more worrying to have no feedback then negative feedback as it’s a sign of waning interest in the game. I’m seeing not just reduced player counts again but the forums and KSP2 side of the subreddit are turning into ghost towns.

Happy anniversary! Thanks for the update hope you all had a good break! Here’s to hoping for a sneakpeak/dev chat on colonies soon!

Orbital colony Haven’t seen this posted as a thread yet, please delete if this is a repeat. If not, I’m hoping this means we get some insight into colonies soon. I haven’t played much at all as science to me needs resources to be fairly judged. And the habitation module ring just may imply life support. I do wonder how the VAB ( VAS? Vehicle assembly station) will fit into this and how specifically resources will work mechanically in the game, here’s me still hoping that the devs are considering that resources be considered as limited by the number of automatic routes tied to a VAB and not based on in game time. Or really any solution other than in game time based as I still don’t see how that type of handling of resources doesn’t just lead to constant time warp to give whatever amount of resources is needed. Happy for this sneak peak, just still wishing we get some insight into what limitations while be added to exploration mode as for me personally those will lead to more interesting and engaging gameplay decisions and bring KSP2 to a level where I will enjoy playing it for fun’s sake and recommend it.

This could make for instance SRB useful again by either being free or a greatly reduced resource cost compared to liquid engines.

And for balance purposes, I’m imagining that the starting resource allotment per launch is enough to get players to the mun/minmus and back. And obviously enough to start the necessary mines to get you further. Experienced players should be able to make it to Duna say, but most players and the “teaching through gameplay” element of it is that it teaches players how to set up resource bases on the mun to help them know how to do it to the further planets. Put a realism breaking but gameplay expanding cap on how many resource bases a player can have from any one celestial body and players will naturally be guided to explore other celestial bodies, which leads to more science, which leads to more resources, which leads to being able to go to further bodies for newer rarer resources, which gets you science and so on.

Science points are great as a tech tree unlocker. That should not be the only axis and consideration of progression. There should be some limit on how big and how many parts can be used that can expand with the player, say for instance the starting KSC only has access to enough resources to build 100 unit value of x resource worth of parts at a time. How many parts that is will vary with how many resource units each part takes. As you expand down the tech tree, you can tie more resources back to KSC which allows for more of those parts to be made. Higher tier parts require more rare, and far away, resources that must be delivered back to Kerbin to build. Newly constructed Vabs the player makes will work similarly, whether they are space docks or surface Vabs. Their benefit is proximity to resources and being able to get out of a friendlier gravity well with perhaps no atmosphere. However, for those to work your com net (with line of sight considerations) must be tied back to Kerbin. Exploration mode is so close to an engaging feedback of gameplay, but until some more is known about resources it’s hard to give good feedback on the direction of the game. This, I would also say, helps with the “time warp away your problems” as it’s not a stock pile of resources but a “you have tied to KSC 3 routes that give KSC 50 resource x units per launch each for a total of 250 (starting 100 plus 3 x 50) resource x units available per launch“ if you want bigger rockets you have to tie in more resource routes, no amount of time warp gets you passed that

This is where I’m at too. There’s ways to increase the complexity of a game and add layers of decision making without overwhelming a new player. Games like chess and go have simple rules, but have enough depth to the few rules they do have that a very wide “gameplay possiblity net” is cast. Reducing progression mode to a one axis progression where you can only add to science, and only science unlocks more things, really overly simplifies the game to me. I'm pretty sure this isn’t the end goal to exploration mode, but without just a little more feedback on how resources will be utilized it’s hard to really dive into KSP2 right now as finishing tier 1 tech in just a few launches made me lose interest.

Without knowing how resources will impact the construction of ships from both the kerbin vab and constructed vabs beyond the starting one it’s hard for me to say anything. Right now progressing isn’t nearly rewarding enough because with no restrictions on the number of parts or size a vessel can be (by saying, can only create a rocket with 100 units of x resource u til tier 2 or whatever) it’s rather trivial to go basically anywhere with only a few nodes unlocked.

I agree with this 100%. A sentence or two of actionable feedback is way more valuable. While we may disagree on the conclusion, my desire for more openness comes from a shared view on this topic. Bad feedback isn’t helpful, and to give concise feedback requires a bit more of a look behind the curtain. As far as the worries of many in the community of this hurting relations and fracturing the community, I would point to the games I mentioned and Factorio as mentioned by @Pthigriviand @Sea_Kerman I really haven’t experienced that negative pushback in beta level EA games, which is where I feel KSP2 is now. The discord comments from Nate for instance is I think a huge step in the right direction. The reveal that the current plan isn’t for line of sight to be a consideration with comm nets may have been disappointing to some (me included) but it gives a chance to give feedback. Which, if they want to listen to feedback, /now/ is the time for them to reach out and hear how desired different features are compared to the time and manpower restrictions they have. If occlusion considering comm nets are left to mods after this, I’m still much happier to be having the conversation now then be surprised by it’s absence at 1.0. But there remains a chance, precisely because of their more openness now rather than later, that the weight of the difficulty of programming such a complicated system for (seemingly) little gameplay gain may actually be worth it because the value of that gameplay element as weighted by the devs is different than that of the community at large.