m4inbrain

Creeping up on KSP1 "total playtime" levels in Roguetech now, lol. I might consider being grateful to whoever fixes KSP2 (despite being 100% certain that it's not going to happen in the first place), but certainly not to the former developers.

Guess it ends like it began. Underwhelming and disappointing. You'd think they'd put some kind of last hurrah into it, maybe as at least a drop of happiness onto the lava lake of awfulness that was KSP2s journey - but nah. Nothing. The smallest patch, which btw shouldn't have come as a surprise nor should it give anyone hope - we knew a patch was coming one way or another, they wouldn't have scrapped already produced fixes - they just bundled what they had, called it a patch. A pretty small one, at that. Almost half a year for less than half the fixes of 2.1. The contempt for their (former) supporters is genuinely disgusting. So was the entire story of KSP2, and what everyone involved did with it. Couldn't even give it a dignified send-off. Lights out.

For people trying to argue that Nates job was basically just to "dream", you might want to check the average description of responsibilities for the job of CD. First, i very much disagree with the notion that Nate is blameless because his job was just to "envision" whatever, and the job of others to reign him in. That's nonsense. But lets say that it is factual (which it isn't, there's a lot more to it). He failed miserably. Starting by establishing the games themes, tone, art and gameplay. Most these were already established prior, by virtue of being a sequel. The rest that wasn't, was already added through mods - so his "creative vision" was, apparently, modded KSP1. With a worse UI. It's also his responsibility to collaborate with other departments like production and marketing. In other words, it's his job to make sure his "visions" are a possibility, not the other way around. This entire notion that a CD has a team of people running after him "reigning his dreams in" is absolute krakens. Further, if, for some reason or another, there is no one to collaborate with, it falls on you to make due, you can't just shift the blame to "well nobody told me that ain't possible, what do i know". I don't know in what kind of Lala Land people live where this logic would apply. Imagine a policer officer not being able to contact his supervisor because he didn't know whether or not to arrest a guy, and then go ahead to arrest him anyway. Imagine an excavator operator not knowing where to unload his shovel, so he'll just dump that stuff everywhere across the jobsite. Imagine a banker not knowing whether or not a cheque is authentic, and just cashing it in anyway because no one was available to confirm. These things don't happen (well the first one does in the US, but generally leads to settlements). The reason these things don't happen is because people are being held responsible. Yet here we are, in the industry where this is desperately needed, we have people simping for professionals that should (and i bet, DO) know better, making up all kinds of excuses as to why they can't be blamed. To reiterate and be crystal clear. It isn't Nates job to "dream up art n design n creative ideas n stuff", his job is also to ensure that these are possibilities. No one elses. If there is no one to double check with like a TD, you go to the programmers/production directly, or you simply pull the brakes and pester T2 until the issue is resolved. I bet it's a comfy life as a creative director if all you need to do is to say "well i want interstellar stuff, also make the UI look unreadable on certain resolutions, and colonies would be cool to - cheers guys, i'm off". Which is what some people here are implying. Here's what Emily Short has to say in this regard, Creative Director at Failbetter Games when asked what's the hardest thing about this role. "The greatest concepts and coolest gameplay will never get in front of players if you don't finish and ship the game - which means you have to respect budget, scope, and production schedules, as well as your team's energy and workability. If you don't respect those concerns, you wind up demanding a lot of overtime from your team, which is an endemic problem in this industry and very bad practice. It's the producer's role to keep the calendar and be on top of who is doing what, but the creative director needs to work alongside the producer and make sure that they're not demanding the impossible. So that means there are many, many individual choices to make about what to keep and what to discard. Sometimes those choices involve things that people on your team care about passionately or that you personally love." If there is no "producer" as such, then you have to find another way to ensure that you're not demanding the impossible, rather than demanding the impossible and then have others lay the blame somewhere else because "nobody told you it was impossible". I also don't care whether or not Nate Simpson feels bad or is sad. I certainly (and i said this before) hope that he'll never work as a creative director for a game again - even disregarding all emotions i might or might not have, just in the purest objective sense, he failed in his job. I've written the $50 off, it's what it is. I am certainly still passionate about KSP1 (unlike others here who argue that KSP1 is awful, and now act like they knew that this was always gonna happen to KSP2 but they don't care - why the heck are you even here then?), KSP2 certainly is dead and will never see the light of day in a shape that would satisfy people, unless a billionaire with no sense of money throws enough budget for an entire do-over at it, which is highly unlikely. Poach Johan Pilestedt, while you're at it - a CD who failed "his community" before as well, but owned up to it. The main thing that irks me in all this is that Nate doesn't have the stones to come out and apologise for his own personal shortcomings. No NDA can prevent that. Maybe Pilestedt is the reason that i don't cut Nate any slack - i know that his job can be done so, so much better. Now, that all said: of course T2 holds the bigger share of the blame. No discussion here. We (well, most of us, i guess) always knew that T2 was inevitably gonna bite us in the butt. In fact, many (including me) called it immediately when it was announced. We didn't get the way they gonna bite us quite pin-pointed at times, but we knew that there wouldn't be a happy end with a Top3 worst Publisher in the industry next to EA and Activision. That doesn't make Nate blameless. The only people that potentially are, are the coders. There's no one blameless in Management. And i wish we could start actually calling it out as it is, rather than trying to buddy up to people. Nate is a professional. He isn't your friend, he gets paid to do a job. He failed this one (and others). That's it, there's nothing else to it. Call it as it is, don't make up excuses for someone who won't remember you next week - and most importantly, don't enable failures like this over and over again. This is as much on us as it is on Nate or T2 (that includes me, i did buy the game despite better knowledge because i'm weak).

As someone who worked in that profession, yes. Very much so. Mind, we aren't talking about "didn't taste good". We're talking about a patron that comes up to me, and starts listing. Plating wasn't good. Wrong plate, too. Lobster could be hotter, the sides were too wet. The wine wasn't dry enough, and the table decor is awful. Also, what's with that table cloth, white is so 1980. Dessert, don't get me started, didn't get a choice between spoon and fork for the cake. Also, cake too dense, filling watery. You bet that most cooks laugh you out of the door, and very much guaranteed will tell you to do it better yourself or jog on. See, criticising things in detail implies you know what you're talking about (commonly referred to as a knowitall), in which case.. yes. Do it better. There's not liking something, and there's pretending to know the processes and failures that lead to you not liking it. Big difference, since one suggests that you could do better by "just avoid these".

Do you know the difference between dis- and misinformation? As a "scientist" trying to propagate "the truth", i find it rather interesting that you immediately jump to the conclusion that people maliciously spread disinformation rather than making a mistake, regardless of the topic at hand. Tells more about you than you might think. You also seem awfully certain that these outliers should be excluded, with no actual reasoning. "Methological grounds" is not sound reasoning to remove outliers.

I like this argument. Does that just apply to prequels, or does that work for sequels too? Because to be clear, even a feature complete KSP2 doesn't offer much over modded KSP1. Indeed, some parts (life support etc) are missing. Do you agree that KSP2 as a sequel is entirely pointless?

As much as i'd like to see consumer rights strengthened, objectively this is a pipe dream. I don't care about the 50 quid, wouldn't care for the slap on the wrist for T2 either. What would satisfy me (hate me for it, couldn't care less) if every single person responsible at IG for this trainwreck gets barred from the industry. First and foremost, Nate Simpson.

It's even funnier if you consider the "source" those assumptions are based on. At this point, a back-alley fortune teller asking for money up front is more trustworthy. More accurate too, probably.

Yeah, now it is. We literally had threads about "toxic positivity", just because you decided for yourself to simply ignore the early stages of the KSP2 release doesn't mean they didn't happen. Nor does it mean that you get to rewrite history. People were absolutely curbstomped when they came out and said what is now considered mostly the consensus about the game.

Good reminder that you can refund a game well above those 2 hours and 2 weeks. Good reminder that "game sucks" is guaranteed to result in a denial. You have to have a good reason - be it technical issues (not random ones, but visibly and widespread ones), or scummy behaviour by a developer (bait and switch etc). I'm reasonably certain that nothing here is news to anyone including you, so i'm not sure what the point of that argument is supposed to be. Your personal annecdote of people with 20+ hours getting a refund for being disappointed? I believe it when i see it. The actual refund, not some guy claiming it. Until then, no. Under normal circumstances, you can NOT refund the game after 20+ hours.

I'm not arguing that constructive feedback/criticism is the vastly preferable process, but this sentence is simply patently false. And there's plenty of examples out there, both gaming industry (No Mans Sky) and movies (Sonic). Any criticism is valuable. Just because someone doesn't make the effort to sugarcoat it, doesn't mean the underlying point is invalid. The only thing that isn't making anything better is pure insults, that's it. Everything else is a developer not being able to handle criticism.

Would be one way, yeah. Though, while certainly not perfect (even partially annoying), i do think the KSP1 approach makes more sense. Not currently, but as soon as resources are a thing. Spending "resources" to upgrade the Launch Pad from basically a dirt mound to (over X amount of stages) to a full Saturn 5 Launch Tower feels better to me. "Knowledge" doesn't build a building, concrete does. If that makes sense. Not that this approach is perfect, i did (and still do) think that it was obnoxious to have certain things like EVA etc locked behind certain building upgrades, so my preferred approach would be resource based, and only for the Launch Pad and Runway (and maybe the new Boat thing, haven't even tried that yet). Would then also give the incentive to do more "local" stuff like starting resource collection on Kerbin. That's just for now though, haven't really thought anything through (since it only became apparent yesterday). You're not going to launch a Colony from a dirt mound/un-upgraded Launch Pad. Your entire argument doesn't really make sense, you're acting like KSP1 doesn't exist and people ran into that problem. They quite obviously didn't. And even if they were, which again, they didn't, that's simply an adjustment of numbers. But, again, they didn't. Because by the time you reach colony stuff, you already have an upgraded Launch Pad, especially if it's paid through resources (which you have to collect plenty of to build the colony stuff in the first place anyway). The same way people in KSP1 didn't have part limits by the time they reached nuclear propulsion.

I noticed that as well, there currently isn't any requirement to "streamline" your rocket, you can just brute force it by adding 12 boosters and a few main sails straight from the get go. Didn't notice how "important" the restrictions in the VAB were (KSP1), but turns out that a lot of challenge goes away if you can just strap more boom to your rocket. Now.. Whether or not that's a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder - i do think it's bad, but on the other hand, i'll still streamline my rockets either way. I just think that there's a missed opportunity to add challenge in a different way (bit like a puzzle game, which parts can i take, where do i have to make concessions etc), other than just "adding Delta V until sufficient". I understand that this potentially get at least interfered with once resources become a thing, but i don't know.. I personally liked it better with constraints. In other news, played a bit further now. I'm not up to date on bug reports etc, so i don't know if the kind of awful (comparatively) performance on the map screen is "normal" or fresh with this patch - but after playing some more now (5 hours i think), .. yeah, the UI will not grow on me, i think it's awful with basically no redeeming features. Unconcise, unwieldy, clumsy, and i hope for either a mod to bring back something concise/compact/lean, or a complete overhaul. All aspects, including the Navball. And no, not the position.

I'm very happy, i played more today than i did in total since the EA release. It's fun, but it's not perfect, and most of my gripes revolve around the UI. It's awful, imo. I've never been a big fan of the new (console focused?) UI, but the science window takes the cake. I'm now at the first moon mission, and i still don't 100% feel like i understand what's going on in the science window. It also took me a few tries to figure out how the collection actually worked, and i still don't understand it fully i don't think. Can i do unlimited experiments with one Science Jr without resetting, just spam the button? Do i need to press something after pressing the corresponding "collect science" button (like crew report), or does it instantly collect it even if it's worthless (due to having done it prior)? It's not just that it doesn't get explained anywhere, which is already not great - it's also not self-explanatory. It feels bloated to the point where i wonder why someone thought that it's necessary to add this much pointless "fluff information". We're playing a game where precision is rewarded (and required), why is the UI so unconcise? Really hoping that the devs/designers get a grip on that. The good thing is that after todays update, i get the impression that they actually might. The only other thing i dislike is the re-entry effect, i actually thought my game crashed for a second when i saw it first due to being basically non-animated at the core, it just looks like a glowing outline around the bottom of the heated part. There's a little animation where it flames out (the top bit), but basically nothing around the pod. The good thing with that is, that's relatively easy to fix, as well as low priority. Doesn't break anything, just looks naff.

Doesn't say "excempt from opinions" on my screen, is yours broken? I like how you disregard someone elses opinion and immediately argue that somehow the guy HAS TO BE some kind of KSP1 shill. I'm not. And i also thinks it looks like the splash screen for a cheap mobile/flash game. At best. In case this isn't quite obvious, now is exactly the right time to state an opinion. You know, being early access and stuff, while things are still work in progress. And in case something else isn't obvious: you don't get to disregard anything. His opinion is as valid and valuable as yours. No need to turn this into an 11 page argument either, save it. He doesn' like it, sucks to be someone who does and vice versa. That's it.