RocketRockington

That's true, and I don't begrudge it to them - especially given that the devs knew their noses would be back to the grind stone on monday - but as those questions were clearly pre-selected, you don't pick a question that gives you the opportunity to crow about it, if you're at all in touch with the sentiment of the community.

I wouldn't count your chickens before their hatched. T2 supported Squad for 4 years because - They operated on a shoe string budget - mostly cheap devs working in mexico city or remote, and a small team. - KSP1 was still selling copies (and made a popular DLC) so it was likely paying for itself. - They were expecting to release KSP2 sooner, so it was basically just marketting. Now, the same isn't true for KSP2 - their operating costs are many times higher - a bigger team mostly working on-site in Seattle. - They're not selling copies (based on the # of new reviews they're getting, sales have cratered) - They are trying to make a profit off of KSP2 - they're not just running it as marketting for KSP3.

The game is clearly less about interesting and improved systems, and more about graphics and whatever glitzy feature they could hype people up for. Which is pretty much par for the course when one of the bigger mainstream publisher gets its hands on an IP.

It is a bit hilarious that the guy who pounced on every single nay sayer pre-launch with long winded rebuttals about how everything was going smoothly and the game would be brilliant also isn't playing it, isnt it? But I guess they found a new hill to die on.

Considering how few features are in KSP2 as it stands, and how long their road is to finishing the roadmap, worrying about features that didn't make it into the plan for 1.0 is kinda moot I'd say. By the time 1.0 comes around, they'll have had a chance to rethink many decisions. Or modders will just add it, if KSP2 is popular enough. That said - I don't think KSP2 is selling well enough to put much stock in the long term future.. Better to just enjoy what's there.

If you read that open letter, a lot of modders don't want to jump into this mess for a while either. 100% agreed. Given how much they talk about connections to the science community, I would have loved to see a more genuine science system, with a gamified spin. Even if they were just stealing ideas from Kerbalism.

And multiplayer, that I have the feeling they're pretty clueless on. I don't think they really knew what they were biting off in terms of gameplay, much less the tech side, when they decided on a multiplayer feature. I can't imagine the average user wanting to sort out 'timelines' with their friends.

Thanks for digging this up. Nate has spewed so much stuff like this over the years. The best you could say is that he was taking for granted that tentative plans they had would work out - but it also just seems the case that he's a similar prevaricator to Peter Molyneux or Sean Murray, just telling the audience what they want to hear rather than paying attention to what his team is even remotely capable of delivering.

Oh btw - can anyone imagine trying to use the Part Manager with a 1000 part craft?

So you give Intercept credit for basically overhyping their game for since 2019 - 3.5 years, and then 4 months from launch, telling the community that it was going to launch in a dramatically-cut down state, and then releasing it as an extremely buggy AND cut down state - but Sim City, which didn't hype for nearly as long and, while it had some crippling issues, launched in a feature complete state and was patched 8 times in the month following release - and was fully working AND feature complete in about 2 months. And yet that launch killed the SimCity franchise. But somehow you believe Intercept's behavior is... better? 1 patch in the last month, still massively feature incomplete, still miles from even being bugfree. Overall I think the only difference is that you don't like EA and you do like Intercept, and you're giving Intercept a much bigger benefit of the doubt. I believe they've overpromised many times and about many many things, failed to deliver and people just seem to aggregate it into one event. An example of the bad boyfriend mentality "I'm sure THIS time it'll be different." Anyway you seem reasonably balanced so I wasn't specifically thinking of you when I spoke about a section of the community as a generalization. Though given your comparison to SimCity I might be reevaluating that,

Well he did mention that the team is not good at knowing what really matters to the community

6 years. Per news articles released during the star theory kerfuffle, it was revealed the project started in 2017. Nate Simpson got made creative director in 2017. Not 5, not 3, not 10. A very specific time. And the entire design team from Star Theory got moved over to Intercept (Nate, Shana, Tom). This is pretty precise knowledge, not sure what you're throwing shade around for.

That was in reference to the resource system - that you'd have to both unlock the part and then gather the resources. Presumably this doesn't impact science mode, both because science mode sounds like a stand alone mode vs needing to build colonies, and because it will be released far before the resource system in the roadmap. I don't see it as being relevant, its like saying 'money changes the science mode in KSP because now you have to pay for the parts too!' Completely irrelevant. I feel like if it was more like Kerbalism like that, he would have had a better answer - either its not that, or the plans are so iffy/unsure that he doesn't feel he can comment. And man - if they're THAT unsure of the next feature on their roadmap - something that SHOULD have been mostly developed by now... you gotta wonder what this design team was doing for 6 years (I guess writing tutorial scripts from the sound of it)

Some softball questions were to be expected though

Lol. Well I did mention KSP2 added its own bottlenecks. But that one - at least in space, while not looking at terrain - is reasonable to expect they'd address.

Another expectations poll. In today's Discord AMA, Nate gave the following answer So, basically this sounds exactly like KSP1's science system, including having missions (eg: contracts) that can award science points. And the first thing he mentions as a 'significant' change is something you could have changed in KSP1 in a tuning file by removing the biomes from KSC. I know a lot of people were expecting something different from the science system in KSP2, or at least, it sounded like they were pre-release, now do you feel about having something just like KSP1's science system but with minor tuning changes and renaming contracts to missions in KSP2?

That could have been alleviated in KSP 1 just by changing Kerbin landed science multiplier to 0, or removing the biomes from KSC. Relatively small tuning changes in other words. He was asked about significant changes to science and that's the first thing he thought to answer with...

Performance will be addressed of course - but fundamental changes to how craft work under the hood (basically the same as KSP1) and thus permanent bottlenecks on how high part counts go won't ever be changed - especially because the team will be scrambling to fix other issues and get to new features.

The tutorials for kids are already part of the game, afaict. That's what the cartoony tutorial system and high-pitched-PAIGE are there for - and also likely one of those 'we focused on it despite it being a low priority for the community' features.

I know I'm a naysayer but thanks for putting together this AMA @Dakota. That said - even though most of the questions surrounding the launch and the history of KSP2's development were not answered, I think there's plenty still here that's going to disappoint a lot of people - whether they acknowledge it or not. - That KSP2 science mode sounds very much like a retread of KSP1 science mode + science contracts to get science. - That robotics won't be in the game for a long long time. - That colony management and multiplayer still are in the 'figure out what the MVP/first cut at it are' vs having several iterations of the design being done and a more final version just waiting to be implemented. - That procedural parts are still limited to the weird selection of just wings and radiators - especially since solar panels would be such an easy thing to do when you already have procedural radiators. - That the creative director seems so blasé about just how terrible the launch of KSP2 was after so many people's high expectations. Drinking champagne after you released a game to <50% reviews on Steam, even with many of the positive reviews more about hope than reality. Ouch. - That he thinks KSP2 is good for reaching a lot of kids - after pricing the product at a premium price and having computer specs that require near-latest hardware, and that a kids experience is likely to just be frustration with the many many bugs in the release. Does he actually think anyone but the most diehard of KSP fans have bought it at this point?

I didn't ask it because I think the community is a perfect prognosticator of future work, though what data miners have done to examine the code is amazing. The reason I decide to ask is because I'm looking at what feels like an odd trend in the community - a lot people were hyped up for certain features, and often seem virtually sure they'd be there - whether there was a specific dev promise or not. Though I do think there was more than enough dev speech toward it though in various communications even if the words 'promise' or 'guarantee' were never used, and the only reading you can give it after the fact is a legalistic one where they didn't precisely pin themselves down to a commitment, but must have known they were leading the community on and did nothing to dissuade it. Anyways, a lot of the fan base who were certain and hyped up about things before release... seem just fine to have their expectations unmet afterwards. Almost seemed to double down because of it. To me, they seem to have been so wrapped up in believing KSP2 is or will be good that it became irrelevant if it was - they'd excuse or rationalize virtually any defect or undershot. So I brought up this old expectation to see if they still are there for people, or if a larger percentage of people have just moved on and will be ok regardless of how KSP2 performs, or if there's true belief is just going to happen some day.

I remember one of the most common pre-launch discussions centered on just how much better KSP2's foundations - the physics, the way it handles parts, etc, was going to be. A lot of the people most anticipating KSP2 didn't care too much about the extra features (colonies, interstellar) and were mostly looking forward to better physics. Just thought I'd do a poll to see what happened to that, what people are thinking now. FWIW, everything I hear from people who reviewed the code is that its KSP1 in most regards, nothing rethought to allow for higher part counts. Some things authored a little cleaner perhaps, but if anything that also means slower and less ready to be optimized. And the core issues that played high-part-count KSP1 craft are all still present + new performance issues that KSP2 has added. So I'm not optimistic, but I'd love to see what the community thinks. Has the music and new shininess made the physics foundation of the game less relevant?

Anyway, staying on topic: Hearing 2nd hand from people who went to the talk, I hear that the talk consisted of KSP1 PQS and more expensive textures and shaders. Nothing really that you'd call 'PQS+'. (Yet again, Nate was overselling/overhyping) And apparently at least the group that went to GDC doesn't seem to be talking about giving up PQS, just a brief reference to something that might be CBT. And of course they didn't fess up to how god-awful the performance is. So overall maybe the mostly-artists that gave the panel don't know what Mortoc is working on, or CBT is considered to be a long shot they're not banking on.

The reddit has 1.5 million members. I'd be surprised if this forum has less than 100,000.

This feels like a valid prediction, if KSP2 revenues land somewhere in the territory of worth keeping the thing on life support. They probably have some rope to keep up thier current burn rate for a short period of time, but I can't see T2 keeping a full team on this for another two years with sales as third party sites like Vg insights are predicting them to be.