Scarecrow71

Are you being intentionally facetious here? You stated "Money is crippling to new players". I countered with Sid Meier using money in Civilization as an example to prove it isn't, and your response was to mention the gameplay loop. I again countered by stating I was responding to your comment about money, not the gameplay loop, and you completely ignore that by saying "Congratulations for starting in career mode". Let me be perfectly clear: Money is NOT crippling to new players. Money, resources, funds, cash, moola - whatever you want to call it - is a basic element of most games. It is not crippling to new players because we are all taught in every game we play that some mechanic limits what we can or cannot do. And even in Science mode, you still have to deal with Science Points, which are a form of currency in the game.

You were talking about money, not the core loop. My point was that money is not crippling to beginners.

I think the modding community would disagree with you considering they gave us colonies, interstellar, resources, extra-planetary launchpads, and a whole host of other things KSP2 is supposed to provide. I think Sid Meier would disagree with you, what with his genre-defining game Civilization using money as a basis for most of what the series does.

I'll have to go back through all the posts, but I believe in one of Nate's posts regarding For Science! he stated they wanted to be on a cadence of 6-7 weeks for patches, not months. It will take some time to find it, but I'll go digging.

You are aware that we have EVA construction in KSP1, right? Which, if I am correct (and I could be wrong) would be the foundation of a VAB-type atmosphere for orbital colonies. All that time people spent in KSP1 fixing broken satellites and attaching new parts to craft outside the VAB is simply orbital construction with a different name. It's just that the type of construction you'll do in KSP2 in this environment will be very similar to what you are capable of doing in a ground-based VAB. Again, I'm speculating this based on what I'm hoping we see. As far as what to add? That's no different than building a space station in KSP1. What function do you want it to serve? Do you have mods that add life support or give other parts that you don't have in stock? Is it a fuel refinery? An orbital launchpad? A waypoint simply to say "The crew needs a few days of R&R before moving on"? That's all up to you to determine. And whatever you define is what determines what you add. My guess is that we will absolutely NEED orbital colonies/launchpads in order to even think about going interstellar. I mean, unless you want to try launching a billion-ton mega-ship from the surface?

Technically, we just got the following announcements: 0.2.2 is on its way There is no timeline as to when 0.2.2 will drop That there will be a 0.2.3 There is no timeline as to when 0.2.3 will drop So there are at least 2 more patches/updates prior to getting 0.3. It has already been 3 months since 0.2.1, despite being told the patch cadence would be 6-7 weeks so as to help prevent a 10 month cycle for milestones. Well, 1 month to get to 0.2.1, 3 months (at least) to get to 0.2.2, then say another 3 months to get to 0.2.3, and then another 3 months to get to 0.3, and you have...10 months to get to 0.3. Dear lord I hope I am wrong. I hope that the delay to get to 0.2.2 is because of killing major bugs, and to get to 0.2.3 is small and QoL stuff that should be there anyhow. But color me unsurprised that the company still cannot hit the timelines they keep telling us they want.

The first rule of cheating is to not talk about cheating. Which means everyone in this thread is breaking the first rule, and therefore cheating.

Don Dokken ban for being a Dream Warrior.

Granted. Everything else in KSP is now worse. I wish to be a Kerbal who respawns on Tylo when I die.

Would be nice if they would at some point remember to post those kind of responses here in the forum. Just saying.

While I can't speak for anyone else, I think the big issue here is the lack of missions available. I also think that the story missions are too rigid, which can hamper gameplay. Don't get me wrong - we have missions to go to the Mun, to go to Minmus, to go to Duna, and other bodies. Some are story, some are side, and all do encourage exploration. But are there enough of them? And is it possible to have the devs implement some form of randomness to them so it isn't the same "drop a lander on Dres" or "get a Mohole in one" every time out? I think that is where the issue with the gameplay resides. Not that the game isn't playable, but that after the first run-through there just isn't enough there to make people (some, not all) go through again OR to keep playing. I mean, as bad as the KSP1 contract system was, it was at least random enough to keep some people playing. I do agree with you that colonies and interstellar and resources should all provide more gameplay options, as well as (hopefully) missions. But the same question about replayability will remain if those missions are all rigid and stagnant.

These are the kinds of things I was talking about when I mentioned in a previous post in this thread about the gameplay loop itself being infinitely more valuable to get fixed than to focus on clouds and graphics. There's no point in things looking pretty if the core systems aren't functioning enough to keep people playing.

I'd like to point out that these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Everyone plays different from everyone else, so what one person experiences may not necessarily be what someone else does. What one person sees as the same thing all the time may not be what someone else sees. With that said, I am of the opinion that parts of the KSP1 career mode are the same all the time. You start with nothing, have to grind out science to unlock the first few nodes, then launch to the Mun. It's only after the Mun - in my own experience, not anyone else's - that the game starts to deviate from previous playthroughs. And as @Fizzlebop Smith pointed out later on in his post, it boils down to the contracts you select or the flights you undertake. I think that, at least for now, it is. The contract system in KSP1 - although broken and not very beloved by all - at least changes up the missions you undertake. All basically the same - go here, test that, build this, etc. - but the parameters change enough to at least make some people think "I wonder what happens if...". KSP2, on the other hand, has a very rigid set of missions to undertake with zero chance for deviation. The story missions all have to be done in the order they are presented, and there aren't any randomly generated ones. The side missions can be done in any order, but again, they aren't random but very strict and rigid in what you have to do. My hope is that KSP2 will, at some point, have a system that is akin to what KSP1 has, but on a larger and better scale. A guy can hope, right?

@Presto200 I am aware of what Nate's post stated. My making mention of the problems was used to highlight that I feel this is what they should focus on, not telling us about clouds or PQS. Are those things nice? Yes they are. But until the gameplay loop is fixed, they don't mean anything.

Yes, you are trying to dunk on me. Not cool to call me out specifically when I'm not the only one who was pretty sure nothing would come out until tomorrow. Thanks for that. On that note, I was wrong. Close, but still wrong.

I wonder if the docking issues are related to either/both of: Incorrect landed state causing trajectory lines to disappear Vehicles falling through terrain during time warp

I'm going to call out a specific post in this thread to @Nate Simpson: I could not possibly agree more here. We were promised an update cadence of 6-7 weeks, and it's already been more than 3 months since the last one. We were promised communication updates every 2 weeks, then every month, then once a month, and then ended with "When Mike finally gets the internal calendar straightened". And when you finally do communicate what is going on, all we get is "We have an update coming. Can't tell you when, but look at the clouds!". I'm not going to apologize for my stance on this. The gameplay loop is infinitely more valuable to be working on than graphics at this point. The clouds and PQS improvements are nice - especially if they finally give some semblance of performance updates to those of us with mid-range equipment that you guys stated the game should run on with ~30 FPS. But for all that is good in this world, please prioritize fixing the gameplay loop. Colonies is great, interstellar is nice, resources will be wonderful. But none of that works if we still have the issues we've been complaining about since day 1. Period. Colonies don't work if the dV calculator is broken. Interstellar won't work if trajectory lines disappear. Resources won't work if all of our buildings and ships fall through terrain when we time warp to get to a full load. Thank you for the update. Please keep these coming with better frequency. But please don't just tell us "We're working on this" and then try to distract us with shiny pictures.

Although I'm a developer (automation jockey, to be specific) by trade, I'm curious to know what other solutions exist out there other than having a tree for identifying something and the things it contains. I'm no game designer, and the things I deal with in code are very straight-forward and don't involve something with hundreds or thousands of sub-parts, so this is a genuine question of me not knowing why it's primitive, as well as trying to understand what other solutions might exist. When it dropped, For Science! absolutely lit the fire. It brought back people who hadn't even touched the game since initial launch, and it got people playing. But that second half of your statement about longevity is where that update failed. Speaking only for myself, I stopped playing as soon as I ran out of story missions. There was no point; the game gave me no direction or objective to complete any longer. And even if you count what happened with the story missions, it was far too short and jumped from "Launch your first vessel" to "Go to the densest rock around the largest planet on the edge of the solar system" too fast. The update brought some new content, and gave some small direction...and then it just ended without warning. And there is no replayability in KSP2, unless you like doing the same missions over and over again? To expand on this point, it's a constant cycle of moving the goalposts. "KSP2 drops in February, and it will change what you think of the franchise." "Our first update will bring this all together." "For Science! will have people scrambling to play for hours!" "Colonies will really make this a complete game." It goes on and on, and will probably continue to do so until we reach 1.0, at which point I'm afraid we'll hear "Well folks, that's it! We're done! On to our next thing!" and we'll all still be left wondering "What the heck did they even give us?". As far as Resources go, I'm of the mind that they should be implemented with Colonies, not after them. And if it weren't for the almost non-existent cadence of patches, updates, and content, I'd say to delay Colonies until they can get Resources working properly with that update. But they can't even get heat and drag correct, so there's no reason to believe they'll ever get Resources right. I've said it already in this thread, and I'll say it again: I'm irked that Mike's statement of "News next week" really meant "News late Friday". Why is it always Fridays? Tom's enthusiasm aside...why? I honestly believe and feel that it's because they don't want to answer questions or deal with backlash/outrage immediately afterwards. By waiting over the weekend to even look at the forums, they can let things calm down and hope people just clam up and not mention it any longer. This whole cadence of "we said next week, but we meant late Friday, which could push into the following Monday if everyone takes the day off" is bothersome. This got asked ad nauseum right after the first AMA with Nate. People wanted to know why they didn't answer the technical questions about the state of the game, and why things were really broken, and when we could expect patches to come out. And to be fair, they kind of hit on some of this at a very basic, ground-skimming level...but they skipped right over what people really wanted to know. And that's been their MO since - ignore the real questions and try to distract with shiny pictures. I'm still trying to figure out if this mess was planned or not. They have the entire first game sitting there to dissect and learn from, and they simply didn't, don't, can't, or won't. Even something as simple as the tech tree (to use your example here) could have been really expanded upon. Heck, take a look at the Community Tech Tree from the mods for KSP1. Throw in Un Kerballed Start and Hide Unavailable Nodes, and there's a great starting point. But for some reason, they simply don't want to. I dislike the new UI in its entirety. It holds zero aesthetic benefit, the layout is counter-intuitive to how people see things, you can't scale it, you can't move parts around, it's too dark, and it's hard to find some pieces of information. I'm honestly waiting for someone to write a mod to change it back to the way it was in KSP1. Keep in mind that the original was initially written by 1 guy in his spare time in a space/genre that had almost nothing else to go off of. And Felipe was pretty much on his own for most of the game prior to 1.0 (I'm not sure when Squad came along, or when he got a formal game publisher and backing, I could be wrong about that). Anyone who argues that it's a game made 10 years ago but has had 10 years of polishing needs to understand that KSP2 has a full development team and the backing of a large studio with millions of dollars. Not to mention they should have learned from KSP1's mistakes. What's that they say about not remembering history?

Then you and I will have to agree to disagree. The core gameplay loop is the primary focus for what I look for in a game. If that's broken, then no amount of polished visuals or music will make up for that. It doesn't matter how pretty the game is; if I find it unplayable or, in the case of KSP2, broken and difficult to play, then I won't play it. The gameplay loop has to come first; everything else is window dressing.

While I agree with you about the graphics and music, I just cannot wrap my mind around the quoted text. The 4 things you mentioned have nothing to do with the actual gameplay loop, which means you aren't in this for the actual gameplay? Is that an accurate assessment? The visuals are good. The music is awesome. But the gameplay loop is sorely lacking. I shouldn't have to rehash the bugs that make the game difficult to play, and performance still isn't optimal. Even the YouTubers are starting to get away from the sequel as it becomes a chore to play. The original has its own problems, sure. But it is far more polished than the sequel. I guess I'm just curious as to why you didn't list gameplay as one of the things KSP2 has and does better.

Technically, we were told we'd get information some time this week. It is just disheartening that they always mean "late Friday right before we close shop for the weekend so we don't have to answer any questions about the lack of information we give".

We promise the game will drop in 2020. Oh, sorry, we meant 2021. Oh, darn it all, we have to delay again. Hey, we're gonna drop patches every 6-8 weeks. Oh, you mean we're already at 3 months with no word of when we'll deliver? Hey, you'll get a KERB every 2 weeks. Oh, we meant every month. On second thought, how about once in a given month. Well, Mike has to update his internal calendar, so we'll start whenever he finishes that even though it's been 6 weeks since the last one dropped. We're going to do AMA's every month. Oh, well, we meant every once in a while. Hang on, we'll just scrap those without telling you. We aren't going to make science just a rehash of what we had in KSP1. Oh, what we meant was that we are going to take exactly what science was in KSP1 and just dumb it down. That enough promises for you that they've made and broken? Or do none of those count? Are you just simply ignoring everything about the KERB? They promised every 2 weeks. Then when they couldn't hit that, they changed their minds and promised every month. Then when a month went by and they were asked about it, they changed their minds again and said Mike had to update his internal calendar, and that they truly meant once in a given month. It's now been 6 weeks, and we have no word on what the heck is going on or when we'll get the next one. So no, they honestly haven't upheld the promises they've made about the communication they insisted they were going to give us. And on this topic, let's also not forget that after the initially promised every 2 weeks, they still failed to hit that target. Go check Discord and you'll see a bunch of instances where they said "No KERB Friday; delayed until Monday". And how much time are we supposed to give them beyond the 6 years we've taken to get to this point? How long after them telling us "Monthly" are we supposed to wait until we say "You know, it's been x months and we still haven't gotten one"? Why on earth do you want to give these guys a free pass for not giving us the communication they promised they would? It's the same story over and over: they promise us more communication, they give us less, we ask about it, rinse and repeat. If you can't see that, then nothing I say will change your mind. The side you've presented is one of ignoring facts. Nothing I've said is untrue; you simply need only look throughout the forums to see everything I've stated.

Before it even happens? Where have you been for the last 15 months? Heck, for the last 6 years? They can't hit any of the promises or timelines they have given us. Why should we expect this to be any different? And you basically proved my point. We got promised bi-weekly and it didn't happen. We got promised monthly, and they are already late. Hard to wait for something to happen when they've proven it won't.

While funds were important in KSP1 in the early game, once you get about halfway through the tech tree and start taking on tourist contracts...not so much. In fact, in my current KSP1 career game, I completed a round-trip mission from Kerbin to Duna/Ike and back that generated 3.5 million in funds. Single launch, no orbital construction, to Duna/Ike. I gathered science in orbit of both bodies, landed on both bodies, and returned to Kerbin. 10 total contracts (8 directly related to the trip, while 2 were related to tracking asteroids that I already had going before this trip), 3.5 million in funds. So yeah, once you hit a certain point, funds are pointless as you can simply generate what you need quickly and easily.