Scarecrow71

This...isn't really a secret. The earnings call for Take Two is on the 16th, and we are all speculating that we may hear something on that call.

While it is nice knowing there is a case....that retainer is prohibitive. Eesh.

I don't just say it. I have personal experience stemming from my own poor performance in the very first job I ever got. 16 years old, got hired at McDonald's, thought it would be a cakewalk and they'd just hand me a check. Boy, did I ever find out differently 2 months in. Walked in for a shift, got called into the office before I clocked in, was handed my final paycheck and told, in no uncertain terms, that "...your performance doesn't meet the McDonald's standard..." and was told I was no longer a part of the McDonald's family. Poor performance in ANY industry can cause employees to get fired, or businesses to close. But we are talking about game dev so...just because you haven't seen it means it hasn't happened? Your personal experience does not mean others haven't had other experiences or seen/heard other things. Your narrow view of what can happen is simply that - your own narrow view. I have been in the same industry my entire career, and I've seen the company I work for gobble up multiple smaller insurance firms. Promises are made, nobody is getting the axe...and then the smaller company ends up just getting gutted, employees laid off, and systems integrated. It happens. Poor performance can, and almost always does, lead to revenue hits.

I've gone through disbelief. And anger. And confusion. And back to anger. And I've skated through the "the game is canceled" stage. Right now, as of today, I am in the "I've got nothing other than stating the facts and hoping that the community can stay together through this" stage. I could not agree more. This whole debacle has caused this great community to fracture right down the middle, with insults and anger hurled from both sides to the other. I just want us all to get along again, no matter what happens or what people think.

My guess is that if we are to hear anything, it will be either during or after the financial call on the 16th. [snip] While I agree with this sentiment, I doubt it will change. Not to mention that you have to wonder how many games in EA from big publishers/companies would never even sniff release without EA.

I think what a lot of people are forgetting is that Steam isn't the only place the game was sold. Myself, much like others, purchased the game on Epic. Which means it isn't just Steam's terms that need to be checked, but Epic's as well. And if the game is canceled, BOTH could be on the hook for refunds.

Did you see where I stated, quite plainly, that I an aware there are people who have an issue with it? Or are you simply just looking for a reason to argue?

I won't deny that there are people who have an issue with the placement and/or size of the navball in KSP1. However, a lot of us, myself included, don't have an issue with it. And there are mods for PC that correct issues people have with it. I can't speak for console because I don't play on console.

No. The navball obstructed your view. I thought it was fine where it was.

And all those official statements from the last 6 years carry so much weight? My point is that people need to be realistic at this point.

You know how a lot of people are all like "Hey, the studio may be getting shut down, but they should still be working and will release new content before June 28"? Yeah, I don't think so. Arkane was shut down without warning too, and all the stuff they were working on for Redfall has been cancelled. Redfall's Offline Mode Was Being Worked On, But Is Dead Now (kotaku.com)

Thanks to Epic, I've got a whole bunch of games I picked up for free that I can cycle through. Thief, Fallout New Vegas, Evil Within...just to name a few. And that's on top of my going through Kerbal Space Program 1, which I happen to love. As far as KitBash goes, I highly recommend it. I picked it up for like $15 a few weeks ago, and it's really good. HarvesteR is engaged with the community, he's actively working on enhancements and bug fixes, and it's just plain fun. Juno, on the other hand...meh. I like some things about it, but there's others that both me. And I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do the whole engine scaling thing to make them as efficient as possible. All told, I agree with you: I'll never purchase another game from Take Two or Private Division, and I'll avoid anything over-hyped by one particular individual like the plague.

Well, Microsoft isn't immune to the mass layoffs and studio closures happening. Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks are the latest victims. Dang. 'A F***ing Gut Stab': Game Devs React To Shocking Shutdowns (kotaku.com)

Banned for being the new page police

I think I said it in another thread, but I'll say it again here for posterity: My biggest fear coming out of all of this isn't that KSP2 will simply get cancelled. What I worry about is that not only will KSP2 get cancelled, but KSP3 will get the green-light to correct what happened with KSP2, and then all those of us who have KSP2 will end up having to pay for the next iteration even though we trusted the company to give us the current one. I'll be up front and honest that if this happens - if development on KSP2 continues OR if KSP2 is stopped and KSP3 is done, and we end up having to pay a second time for it - I'll be done with the franchise. I refuse to have paid for a product that was never finished only to be told "give us more money; we promise we will finish this time". Fool me once and all.

The largest problem you will find with mods in KSP1 is that the more you add, the longer it takes the game to load. Load times for stock are already too long; once you add a few mods you start talking in terms of 10s of minutes for loading. Even with better-than-average hardware, you could be looking at 15-20 minutes just to get away from the "Applying Patches" screen at initial start-up. With that said, the list of mods any one individual user would stack onto KSP is all really dependent upon the type of gameplay you want to have. For example, what kind of additional parts are you looking for? Colonies? Orbital launchpads? Russian space program? American space program? Probes or command modules? Tanks? And even with all these parts, are you looking to update stock textures? Use additional graphics mods to get the new parts looking their shiniest? And considering there are thousands of KSP1 players, you are bound to get thousands of different answers. So be prepared to sift through a whole host of lists. Kind of like the one I'm about to give you. My recommendations on must-have mods, those things that I believe the game should include as stock options but doesn't: MechJeb Kerbal Engineer Redux Kerbal Inventory System/Kerbal Attachment System Community Tech Tree Un Kerballed Start Hide Empty Tech Tree Nodes This of course is my preferred list and applies only to myself. You may find that you agree with any, all, part, or none of this list. And keep in mind that this has nothing to do with parts, contracts, graphics, or anything else you may be looking for.

So I have a question. The financial call for TT happens on the 16th. People here talk as if it is a public call people can listen in on. Is that the case? If so, how do we listen in, and at what time? My assumption is that we can't, but that the call is made public shortly after it happens. If someone can confirm this, I would greatly appreciate it!

That's a hard question to answer, and it really depends upon the interpretation of the Early Access model, especially as it relates to Steam's/Valve's terms. Going strictly at face value, taking the terms of EA and comparing them to what has happened, I say that TT/PD/IG did not release this in the spirit that EA intends. And I'll break this down by going through multiple sections of the terms. For anyone who doesn't already know, Steam's EA Terms are right here: Early Access (Steamworks Documentation) (steamgames.com) The game, upon release, was most certainly alpha state at best. It was not, however, entirely playable unless you had the best hardware AND got really lucky with the bugs. Myself, I never saw the bug where the KSC followed you into space, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist. A lot of people found the game to be crude and raw, in a vastly unplayable state. Add to this that it really wasn't worth the current value placed upon it ($50 USD), and I don't think that the company even met the very first paragraph of the terms. This part of the terms is really sticky. A lot of people have opined, both before the announcement of the layoffs as well as after, that the company used EA to fund the project. This includes initial sales, the sale that happened a few months into EA, and then all the sales that were generated from the release of For Science. And while we cannot prove whether it was or not, if it did happen, that's a clear violation of the terms here. You simply cannot sell a game in alpha/beta/early access simply to find the continued development of the game. At least not according to Steam/Valve. Not saying it doesn't happen, but rather that it shouldn't. And if it did, they violated the terms. These are the first couple of paragraphs of the terms; we haven't even gotten into the actual rules yet. And things already look bad. But, let's look at several of the rules here. This is the big one right here. We were told multiple times by multiple people that the game was fully funded, development would continue through 1.0, and hey, here's the roadmap of expected features. Everything we've been told for the last 15ish months is literally in violation of rule 2 here. The expectation was that the company would be transparent with the community, and that we would be involved in helping steer the direction of the game. What we got was mostly radio silence, with some corp-speak-lip-service when we did get communications. Goal posts continuously moved in regards to what communication we'd get and when, and even the content of communication changed (I'm looking right at the removal of items from KERB reports due to them "clogging up the report when nothing has changed"). We were consistently left in the dark, much like we are now, forced to determine for ourselves whether or not anything was actually happening. And while difficult to actually prove, they are still in violation of rule 5 no matter how you shake it out. This is an important one, even though I'm going to state that this wasn't violated. It's hard to prove whether or not the game was a tech demo or not, primarily because it wasn't very playable at launch. The problem here is that the company wasn't really trying out concepts, or that they didn't have specific gameplay. For those few who had the right hardware and weren't hit by the bugs, they could get into orbit, hit the Mun, leave Kerbin's SOI. So no, this rule wasn't violated...even though we all feel like it was. This is my favorite part of the terms, and it's found in the Q&A section. The company is supposed to - not forced, not mandatory, but supposed to - tell Steam, and by extension us, how they are going to communicate. We've beaten this horse to death, but it's important to note because it's right in the terms. They are suppose to let us know how they'll communicate, using what media, how often, and what content the communication will include. And they did NONE OF THAT. I mean, in addition to simply clamming up, they barely told us how they would communicate, and then every so often just changed their minds and expected us to just go with the flow. All told, I personally believe that Take Two/Private Division/Intercept Games did NOT approach Early Access in the spirit with which it should be intended. They violated multiple rules and sections of the terms, and they should be held accountable for this. Again, this is one person's opinion of things, and I could very well be wrong. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't do the whole corp-speak-interpretation thing very well. But I believe they didn't follow the rules.

Disagreeable ban

When the game was announced, I was excited and couldn't wait. That excitement didn't wane in the slightest even in the face of multiple delays and studio shake-ups. And then when they announced that the game was going to finally drop, I was over the moon. I simply could not wait to get my hands on the game. And then it dropped with a $50 price tag, and I thought "Are they sure this is the right price in EA". But I ponied up the cash and started to play. The excitement wanted. Hard and fast. Bug after bug presented itself, making the game nigh unplayable. Sure, I could fight with the controls and get a rocket into orbit...but why should I have to? I couldn't figure out why things that worked in KSP1 no longer functioned in KSP2. SAS was broken, the KSC followed you into space, rockets wobbled all over the place, orbits decayed. A verifiable cornucopia of problems. Things that we took for granted in KSP1 because they were polished there looked at us and laughed. And the more I played, the worse it got. I eventually put the game down between updates, checking only to see if the newest update finally fixed [insert whatever problem you hated most]. Throughout this time, I actually tried my hand at becoming a modder for the game. There were so many issues that needed tackling, and I thought "what harm can it do". I created a mod to fix a fundamental issue with targeting planets, and it has several thousand downloads. One person even identified it as a critical mod needed to play the game. I'm pretty damned happy about that (and yes, I'm blowing my own horn here). But that didn't correct all the other problems, and even the modding community struggles to fix the things that are fundamentally wrong. For Science! came out, and I fired up the game. Played through all the story missions...and put the game down due to a lack of replayability. That, and the story missions were over way too quick. Launch a craft, go to the Mun, go to Minmus, go to Duna...now go to the densest rock on the edge of our system. Did that? Ok, you're done now. There is zero reason to keep playing unless all you want is to complete the tech tree. We still don't have colonies, interstellar, or resources (don't get me started on multi-player; it's not a feature I want, so I don't care if it ends up in the game or not). FS was supposed to keep us engaged and wanting to explore - they called it Exploration Mode, for pete's sake - but there wasn't any reason to. "Well, you still need to unlock Tier IV". Um, no, I don't; I landed on Pol and Bop and returned without it; I dropped a rover on Tylo and got to the monument without Tier IV. Once you do all that, do you really need to finish the tech tree here? All told, I started as "Shut up and take my money", but am now in the camp of "this is the reason why I never buy EA games in the first place".

We did. Or, at least, I did at one point. But someone pointed out how to orient myself, and now I know that when I drop a command module I have to simply hit E once, and then when I'm looking at the number 4 on the wall I'm oriented properly.

I would highly advise to not spam the same link across multiple threads. While I'm not a mod or admin, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't like you doing that. If it's that important, create a new thread.

I picked up Juno due to it being 60% off (60 freaking percent!), and I've got a couple hours into it. And there are things I both like and don't like about it. What I Like Procedural parts, especially fuel tanks. From short and thin to tall and wide, you only need 1 tank in that stage. This cuts down on the total number of joints, as well as trying to get multiple tanks of varying sizes to mesh together. And the game automatically knows what kind of fuel is in the tank based on the engine you attach. I also like the tech tree. One of the things I was vocal about and hoped for with KSP2 was moving away from science points in favor of a milestone system, and Juno has that. You get tech points based on what you've done, not how many biomes you hop to in one flight. What I Don't Like The VAB (or whatever they call it in Juno) is horrid. I like being able to orient by craft builds based on which direction I know is east, and the VAB in Juno has no points to know which way is which. It is clunky to use, the cameras are bad, and it doesn't seem very intuitive to use. And the icons for various sections don't make much sense. There doesn't seem to be much incentive in the early game to go into space. I've launched 8 or so rockets to this point, and I've gone sub orbital once. None of the contracts I've seen yet ask you to go into orbit, instead focusing on flying in the atmosphere. In KSP1, I'm generally in orbit by the 2nd or 3rd flight. Perhaps it is just me, waiting to get used to the game before I just go off. But even in KSP1 you get contracts to go orbital really fast.

This. I've been saying this since the launch of the game. The window dressing and new music is all fine and such, but it means nothing if the core functional systems aren't working.