Scarecrow71

Calling 911 to ask them to play their demo tape for you.

Epic has, effectively, the same refund policy as Steam: 14 days and less than 2 hours played. As far as how painful it is compared to Steam...that I don't know. With all this said, I'm going to wait until after June 28 to see if we get any type of official statement or story before I go the refund route. Heck, I may just keep the game regardless, if only as a warning to myself to not get involved in EA games ever again. It's a $50 lesson I shouldn't have had to deal with, but if I learned my lesson then that $50 was well-spent.

It doesn't help his position that he was the face of multiple other games that also failed. And that he told us repeatedly that KSP2 was fully funded and will be completed. And in his last post right before the WARN notice, he was talking about a patch coming, and that there would be a second patch after that before Colonies. Which were also on the way. Look, he is a smart guy. But there is no way he didn't know something was coming. And if he truly didn't, then he isn't as smart as we believe he is. Either way, as the face of the franchise, he is going to get flak. Especially after all the stuff he told us.

Keep in mind that @Nate Simpson promised us on more than one occasion that the game was fully funded and would be seen through to completion. He also released a pretty lengthy dev blog 2 days before the WARN notice came out. Nate is not without blame here.

That's not news, though. We've known for a month now that 70 employees at Intercept Games would be laid off.

Several of us have been asking for this since EA launch, but instead got labeled as haters or doomers over our view of the game. And it is hard to look at this thread knowing our pleas over the last year were all but ignored.

I think you've got a better chance of seeing God walk by in a skirt.

I've got plenty to say on this topic, so please bear with me as I multi-quote a bunch of stuff. There is a 3rd option here that you are discounting: Use a new engine, but reuse whatever code from KSP1 that you can. I highly lean towards this option, knowing that I know nothing about the existing codebase for either game, as well as having very limited/not-even-amateur-level knowledge of either Unity or Unreal (which seems to be the popular pick here in the community to re-do the game with). Even just having access to the code from the first game can provide a lot of insight, especially as it relates to bugs that the first game solved, as well as providing a roadmap of sorts of what not to do. As I said above, this seems to be the engine of choice for the community. I have zero idea how much effort it would take to build a custom engine, but with my very limited knowledge I was able to follow a tutorial from someone and build a rotating planet in Unreal 5.4. And the tutorial was written for Unreal 4.x, so a lot of the concepts, ideas, and techniques from older versions may still be very applicable. This is actually supposed to be part of the agreement between the developers and the customers during EA. Something which Take Two, Private Division, and Intercept Games seemed like they wanted to do at first...but then failed miserably at. But even with that "agreement" in place, I still would rather have the developers working on the game itself, with Community Managers engaged with the community and acting as a go-between wherever possible. I think we need more communication, no matter who it comes from, but the developers should only be involved in community engagement when the concepts they are talking about are way over the heads of the CM's, or when we are discussing bugs that need to be fixed. This was supposed to be a thing with KSP2. We were told by Nate and a lot of other people involved that the modding community was a big part of the reason for KSP1's success, and they wanted to make sure the modders were involved with KSP2. The big problem is that the game has to be built and be stable before you can create API's that are effective enough to mod the game. Although, as we have seen - and as I myself even did - the modding community didn't care about having API's and just went about their business. There are a lot of great mods for KSP2, and I have no doubt that if the company had stuck to their word about the game being mod-friendly we would have even more than we do now. This goes along with having a proper budget, which I didn't see you mention anything about. We heard about the average salary for developers in SZ's video, and so the budget becomes a very real, very needed thing. If you pay the developers what they are worth and/or what the market commands, and give them the right tools for the job, which would include testing rigs, we are talking about $250k per developer. You want a team of 4? That's $1 million per year, and we know that the team should be at least 5-8 people. We estimate high (8 people), so we get $2 million per year for the developers alone. And that doesn't include office space, CM's, other overhead we aren't thinking of. That $10 million for 2 years that TT gave Intercept was probably in the right ballpark, but still well short of what they needed. Couldn't agree more. Too many issues with multiplayer for this genre of game. It works best in FPS games where the object is to kill your opponent (and yes, KSP could very well have that element with air-to-air and air-to-ground combat situations). But for a space game where the vast majority of things are building and getting to orbit? Just doesn't work in my humble opinion. Again, I disagree with 100% new code. If you have access to the original game's codebase, it would be highly detrimental to not utilize what you can. If we are talking about this being a 1.0 release, I think we need to back up a bit and do this in pieces. For example, Resources/ISRU could be left out of the initial release into Early Access, with it then being added in at a later point. Same thing with Science mode - which needs a massive overhaul to begin with as the science points system just doesn't seem to work/fit any longer - and Career mode. Graphics improvements should be coming out with every patch or bug-fix if possible. I can see having improvements in a 1.1 release, but let's not forget they should be coming all the time (again, if possible). I love the idea of more parts, especially if we can get some of the Near Future, Stock-alike, Space Station, and RL US/Russia/Japanese parts that we all want. I wholly disagree with Life Support. This is a topic that is a heated one on the forums, with 2 very distinct factions - one for, one against. I'm not against having it so long as it's an option to turn on or off...but if the vast majority of the community (in my estimation) will keep it off, then why have it? I love the idea of tethers, with the option to remove them and do EVA maneuvers. I also would like to see being able to move the tethers from one part to the next instead of having just one long one. Interstellar is a hot topic, and brings up a lot of questions. Such as "How do we deal with Time Warp under acceleration" and "How close/far should they be" and "Do Kerbals live forever". I would love to sit in on discussions on this, even if I'm muted and can't ask questions. I think other launch sites should be included before this update, though. We have them in KSP1 thanks to DLC; why wait this long in KSP2? Why is career mode so far after initial release? You can see here I'm starting to ask questions on decision-making, which is probably more me wanting to understand where you are coming from. Career mode could be implemented before this, and should be implemented before Colonies. I have no comment on IVA as I don't use it. I guess a lot of this depends upon how compatible those models - not the mods themselves, but the actual models in those mods - are with KSP2. I honestly don't know if they are or not. I do know that KSP2 kind of uses the same lego-building system that KSP1 used, so I'd really be curious as to how much effort this would take. Beyond that, my question is "Why is near future part of 1.1 but all the other real-life stuff part of a DLC? I get Near Future is probably needed for Interstellar, but wouldn't that fall under the same premise you are using here with needing all that effort to recreate the parts for KSP2? And RO is another one of those things that I'd support if it had the option to be turned off. There's a reason why RO is a mod and not part of stock - or even part of DLC. I know people use it, but are there enough people who use it to make it part of a purchasable DLC? Or are you only throwing it in here because it's part of DLC with a lot of parts? Why have RO in the first DLC package and not this one? What about JNSQ? Or KSRSS? Un Kerballed Start? Alternate tech trees (depending upon how Science mode is set up)? Why are you getting rid of Kerbals in favor of Humans? If I want a human look-alike, I'd go play Juno, or Rocket Science, or one of the other space clones. Leave Humans out of it here, please. 3 years of development up to 1.0? Are you accounting for setbacks, changes to scope, issues with staff coming/going? What about things like studio buyouts, shifting priorities, changes in office locations? You brought up 12 people for 4 years to get to 1.0 with KSP, but what you are talking about here is a far larger project than 1.0 in KSP1. We have to assume that all currently working features in KSP1 are part of KSP2 at 1.0, plus you want to redo all the parts, all the code, have ISRU and resources, and a whole lot more. Just in 1.0. Are you sure 3 years is enough time to do all that and have contingencies for things that fail or go wrong or change? What I want, in no particular order (primarily because I'm just writing this off-the-cuff): Any sequel must have the same working core functionality as the original. Every core system must make the transition and be stable and working. All of these issues with orbital lines missing, or decaying orbits, or chutes not opening, or spontaneous combustion on the launchpad simply because the game says so? Gone. None of that can happen in the sequel, even in early access. You simply cannot have the game only function on NASA-level computers. To have mid-range equipment and get 10 FPS at best just because I have 100 parts is ridiculous. There is ZERO reason to have any game do this with the technology we have today. 20 years ago, sure. Today? Simply cannot happen. Several popular mods for KSP1 should be included in stock. MJ, KER, Transfer Window Planner, and Alarm Clock should all be part of stock. Now, some of their functions could be unlockable based on what you've gotten done in a career game (MJ already does this; you don't start unlocking functions until you've upgraded the buildings AND gotten Advanced Flight Control). This is a space program; I refuse to believe that any competent species that has spaceflight capability doesn't have the ability to program their own computers to display critical pieces of information OR have the computer take over for launching or landing. We see it in TV and movies all the time - the computer controls launch and landing unless something breaks. Procedural Tanks. Let me say that again because it's that important: PROCEDURAL TANKS. There is absolutely no reason other than "we don't want to code that" to keep this out of the game. Juno does it. I think Rocket Science does it. Why does the sequel to the genre-leading game not have it? A mission/contract system that is not repetitive, but allows for replayability through different careers. The hard rails with limited actual missions in KSP2 is sad and boring. I get that every game will have some variation of "Go to the Mun" and "Go to Dres" (assuming you believe it exists). But there is no reason to stop there. Make the system generate random contracts to go do stuff or go explore other places. No, I don't have the answers, so don't ask. Yes, I happen to like KSP1's contract system, especially when you start adding the contract packs. Change from Science Points to Tech Points. You can still run science experiments. Heck, I'm a fan of weather balloons and weather tracking. Still need biomes, primarily because weather patterns are different over deserts than they are over the ocean (as an example). But we should still be able to perform experiments so we can account for different things when designing and flying. We should progress based on what we did IN ADDITION TO what we know. I mean, how does knowing the barometric pressure on Kerbin get us the ability to fly to Jool? We should be going through a series of different activities to increase our knowledge and gain access to new things. And make this in addition to experiments. We cannot just throw those out; they contain valuable information (such as how different materials react to different temperatures, as an example). So make this a combination of the two. Bring. Back. Kerbal. Specialties. I liked having to account for "I need to run experiments in these three different areas, but one of them needs to be reset each time, so I need to bring a scientist...but I also gotta have a pilot because Bill isn't skilled enough to fly or have SAS...and I better bring along an Engineer in case something breaks". This brings design considerations into the game that simply don't exist in KSP2. Right now, it's just "Well, who has the coolest-sounding name" instead of "I need a pilot, an engineer, a medic...". And on this topic, I liked having to have them "level up" to get better...but I didn't like how that was implemented. I don't have an answer on this one myself. I could probably keep typing away, but you should get the point here. There are so many opportunities to do things in KSP2 that I don't think the developers took into account. Or that they did take into account but TT told them "Um, no".

Akron, a city in Ohio

It is a banner day.

Wrong. We don't think the developers "owe us a lot". We think the developers at a minimum owed us better communication as to what was going on, how development was going, and what they were doing to fix the bugs that were present in the game. We begged and begged for more communication, got told that more communication was coming, and then we got nothing. It is entirely NOT wrong of us to expect what we were told we were going to get, and that is certainly not feeling like we were "owed a lot".

While your logic is sound, it is flawed with KSP2. I bought EA on launch day not based on what it would be, but what we were told it was. We knew it didn't have a lot of the features, but it was still KSP, and we were still supposed to be able to fly rockets and planes and visit the other planets. Except that the premise of EA is that our voice gets heard, and that the devs do interact with us. It is literally in the terms, so to defend them not living up to their end is mind-boggling.

I couldn't agree with this more. Multi-player is great in FPS games like Halo or CoD. But in a spaceflight game? Not so much. The biggest issue is time warp. Specifically, how do you handle one player needing to warp ahead to some window while at least one other player doesn't. You could turn it off, but then you've got one player who just leaves the server and you hope they come back to finish their mission at some point.

The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.

And Matt Lowne is campaigning for people in the EU to start asking for refunds. Dang. https://x.com/Matt_Lowne/status/1795201383416705137?t=qIuGWvJC4imnuwv-PxofTA&s=19

And so do I. I use MJ to get the rendezvous and zero out acceleration, but then I just point the two docking ports at each other and slowly fly in. Nothing wrong with that method. Keep in mind that your experience is not going to be the same experience anyone else has. Your mileage will vary. How you play the game is not how anyone else will play it. I will never dock entirely manually. I will always use MJ to some degree/extent. You do you. For my own experience...no, it is not fun to sit and fiddle with the controls for hours just to get docked. Nobody in real life would ever try to do this manually. That is why we have computers. Crashing when docking after spending an hour or more just lining it up isn't fun. Not to me, anyhow.

This is pretty much the agreed-upon approach by everyone in the community after seeing SZ's video. Granted, we don't know what the current codebase looks like. But it's obvious that the developers didn't use the codebase from KSP1 as a starting point, and that is evident through the bugs that exist (either the same ones from KSP1 OR bugs that were solved by KSP1 that aren't resolved in KSP2). Starting over is, unfortunately, the most likely way to go. This is the tricky part. If a new company purchases the IP, they are under zero obligation to provide any sort of discount or freebie for anything they produce with KSP. Even if they called their new game KSP2, they have no obligation to give existing customers a discount. Whether or not it's the right thing to do has no bearing here because, as you've stated at the end of your post, any sort of profit is a long-term thing. And giving away the game at a discount to existing customers is eating into future profits. On top of this, you have to have some way of verifying if someone has a copy of KSP2 that they purchased and didn't refund. And at that, how do you differentiate the people who paid full price ($50, or however many pounds/rubles/rupees/whatever your home currency is) vs. those who got it when it was on sale? And if you got it on sale, what kind of a discount do you get? Surely not equal to the discount someone who paid full price, right? Everyone who has a copy of KSP2 (or, rather, most people who have a copy) are pretty irked at it appearing to be dead and probably not going to be finished. But I think you might be in the minority here about being irked if they came out with KSP3, provided that the new game is far more polished than the current one. Heck, I think if we got a decent sequel at some point we'd all probably just forget about KSP2 and be pretty darned happy. Without having a completed game to this point, talking about DLC is an exercise in futility. We have no way of knowing what is/can be/might be in the stock game, so trying to come up with DLC is pointless. I CAN tell you that mods would probably include a boatload of new star systems; KSP1 has mods that include interstellar, so making them a pay-for-play thing in KSP2 would just be wrong. Modders would probably add star systems after seeing the first stock one, and mods are free. If you are talking about DLC possibilities, we need to know what is in the stock game first. My first suggestion would be robotics (as that was confirmed as not being part of stock at any point), and that's something that everyone wants. I certainly hope not. That game series with the plumbers fighting sewer crabs was great...right up until they spun off a billion other games, movies, a potential TV show, web comics, etc. I would hate to see Kerbals get watered down like that. And yes, I might be alone in that thought. Merchandising, like with plushies, is ok. But going into Lego or other toys brings me back to my previous point about watering down the IP. Sith Lord Jar Jar Kerman

Bej was agreeing with you, stating it was on Mech to provide proof instead of defaulting to telling you to search Discord.

The layoffs aren't technically effective until the 28th of June. So the staff very well could still be in the office working until then.

Granted. You give down. I wish to be a Q Tip.

Um, those are the titles of people we know have already been let go.

That statement alone tells me he was the absolute wrong choice to lead this project. I'm all for realism with joints; some flex, breaking under intense strain, maybe a slight jarring here or a minor shift there if you are being too overzealous. But to just have a wet noodle flying through the atmosphere, and then try to sell it as both necessary and fun? He has no clue. Which a lot of us in the community have been saying since day 1. We were told continuously that they wanted our feedback, and that the bug reports were good, and that we were important to the end product. And then they clammed up and just pushed out whatever they thought was great, the community be damned. Bugs be damned. Heck, the game itself be damned, so long as the art and marketing departments were happy. I think this actually boils down to "How much of the code itself is salvageable, and how much has to be tossed and redone". And depending upon your personal preference for how much code you think it takes to make the game salvageable, it could go either way. I guess that, without knowing what the code itself looks like, and only looking at what the game is today...:shrug:? I have no words. Hard agree. Because I'm a software person myself (automation jockey mostly, but I dabble), I've actually downloaded and fired up Unreal. Followed a small tutorial, and I've got a planet rotating in space near a star! Hey, that's big news for me! Anyhow, from what I understand Unreal is far better equipped to handle some of the physics than Unity is. I just wonder how much of developers avoiding Unreal has to do with it being from Epic? That was probably the most eye-opening thing I learned from this video. I've seen my fair share of management imposing stupid rules on their teams in the name of business, but to be told you can't even talk to the former developers? Don't look at the previous code and learn from their mistakes? That alone should invoke firing of the entire board.

Once again, you are putting words in my mouth. I never said you were the sole source of negativity. I'm merely asking questions that you conveniently continue to disregard and refuse to answer. You also twist whatever is being said so that it suits whatever narrative you have, trying to make yourself look better while putting everyone around you down. Which you've now done at least twice in the last several responses to me to simple statements I've made. Let me be clear: There are other negative people here on the forum; you are not the only one. I'm just calling you out because, as I've stated before, you are on record as not liking either game, and all you seem to do is push out a negative point of view on every idea and topic that comes up. So you are either here looking only for a fight, or you are a liar about everything you say. Again, I'll ask: which is it?

It's not a source if it's said after you already had a source. So you're either intentionally looking for a fight, or you're a liar. Which is it?

They aren't a redeeming factor for HarvesteR. They are a redeeming factor for KSP1. Read that again: Redeeming factor for the game, not the developer. Source? I won't be shy and admit I'm not liked by everyone. I'm also a bit blunt and direct, primarily because I dislike ambiguity. But if you are going to make the claim that you've seen others speak negatively of me and my attitude, I'll ask for proof. Can't better myself if I'm not aware of what I'm accused of doing wrong.