VlonaldKerman

I think what many people are upset about is that none of these issues needed to be found by the community in order to be fixed. On release, the game was so broken that a simple Mun mission would likely see a dozen bugs or more, with several game breaking ones. Almost none of the bugs that have been fixed would have gotten by QA testers. Why release the game when you still need 6+ months just to make a rudimentary sandbox experience playable? And if you’re gonna do that, why so tight-lipped about feature updates like science? It feels like they’re trying to gin up hype and excitement for the future by denying us information, but they haven’t earned that faith yet. By the way, this is exactly what people were complaining about on day one- there hasn’t been a massive song change like you’re intimating. All that’s changed is that some of the massive bugs are being patched (good) but it’s taken six months (bad) thus vindicating the view that the game was nowhere near what would make sense to release when it was first released into EA (bad).

I think there’s a third option: Many other EA games have devs that are much more transparent about the state of their features, especially games that are in alpha (like KSP 2 actually is). When you resign yourself to only revealing features once they are “ready” or “when we have more to show you” (that is, except for the actual release of the game, which did not meet those criteria) or through polished dev blog videos or trailers, you tie one hand behind you’re back because you have to set dates and the community reacts blindly due to a lack of information. Set a date and end up late? Bad! Underpromise? Bad! How else are we supposed to react? Instead, they should call a duck a duck, and say, “this is a true early access, which means we are letting the community into our development process”, and give us an actual appraisal of the state of each of the planned features as they stand today. Then there would be no need to set dates- and the community’s reactions would be less severe because they have visibility into what is actually going on instead of being left to wonder for long periods of time. For example, let’s apply this principle to an alternate universe version of the initial EA release, to see why it would have seen a better community response: Instead of promising the game to be released in 2020, they could have been honest about the state of the game. This is probably too early to be super transparent about the game, but there is a basic level of honesty involved in setting a release date. Fast forward to the years of several delays. Instead of delaying the game and blaming COVID, they could have been transparent about which technical feats were proving challenging, where the features stand, and if they had to start over and why. In this universe, the KSP community, many of whom have tech jobs, would have understood that KSP 2 is a technical game requiring many complicated systems and even innovations. There would have been no swings of high expectations, then letdowns in the face of delays, because just as development flows slowly but surely, so too would the communication, and the community would see in real time what was happening, rather than building up anticipation only to receive a vague message about delaying the game for quality’s sake. In this universe, when the EA released, the community would already know exactly what to expect, and people who weren’t interested in that level of bugginess and poor performance wouldn’t have found themselves feeling scammed out of $50. Fast forwarding to today, we wouldn’t be speculating on the forums about whether or not the game will be completed, because we would see how advanced each of the features are, and I’m sure we would all be satisfied (right?). Science update would not be a mystery, and there would be no pressure for them to set a date, because the community of thousands of people who spent each $50 on the game would know what was still left to be done for science before the update. All of this assumes, of course, that if we were suddenly able to peel back the curtain and see what the devs are doing, and see the state of the game, that our concerns for the future of the game would be alleviated. The flip side of the transparency game is that if the team is incompetent and if the game is as much of a mess as we’re worried it might be, then that would become apparent, too. So my question to the devs is this: why not take this approach? The optimistic view is that they still want to act like how they think a AAA studio is supposed to act, and be secretive about game features so that we wait with baited breath. But I’m that case, they shouldn’t have released such an undercooked, broken game! You can’t have your cake and eat it too, release into super early access and ask for community feedback, and treat new features with the type of secrecy one would expect from a game that doesn’t even have an early access, only a full release. That ship has sailed.

I think that’s an exaggeration. Also, I just looked at the KSP 2 discussion thread repository, and there are many threads about substantive things with minimal ranting which have had no replies for days or weeks. People can have those discussions, they just aren’t. There are a few threads with “ranting”, but their names are like “Player count halved after release”, “Another tweet by the team,” or “How should rockets flex”, which are either explicitly about the KSP 2 dev team/development problems, or about a game breaking bug, etc. By contrast, discussions about features or game systems, such as “Kerbal Mortality” haven’t seen replies for days or more. I don’t think those were polluted with discussion about the games busted development, though I may be wrong. So I think there’s a little bit of exaggeration on the part of those who want to posture themselves as “above that”. I’m not necessarily accusing you- you’ve made many posts on substantive threads. But if every time a user accused me or someone else of being non-thoughtful or repetitive, that person also posted a productive comment on a substance-based thread, the forum would look more like it sounds like you want it to.

I wonder if performative arguments have increased, or if there is simply less substantive stuff to talk about these days, because not much new has happened. Most topics have been worn out, so what is left on the forum is a low volume of posts about an issue that’s still salient, which is the fact that the game is currently a mess. Therefore it seems as if the forum has turned negative or unproductive. I’ll make a prediction: the tedium will become comparatively less impactful once a serious feature update is released in 5 years time. (okay the last bit was sarcastic, I couldn’t help myself)

Hey Chris, Can you give some more detail on the supply route system? Can you automate the construction of supply vessels, or does a vessel have to be built to assign an automated route to it? In other words, when the route is finished, does the vessel have to be intact? Also, will metal to build basic rockets and methalox fuel be limited in the early game, or will there be infinite fuel on Kerbin? If so, how is this balanced against the ability to send an arbitrary number of refueling ships to a colony, as opposed to what I think you probably want to encourage, which is ISRU?

Is this the new line? In two months, is this what people are going to be saying underneath the dev update that says, “science is coming early next year, not late this year”? A bug fix patch, with no information about the timing science update, and probably no timing for heat, either.

Yes xD. Though, fun fact: KSP 2 wasn’t going to be early access either until October of 2022! To me, that is one question, but another would be, “why did they pretend like it was ever going to release in 2020, or 2022, or 2022, or 2023?” (in may ‘22 they claimed it would release in early ‘23, with no mention of early access). It did not happen during COVID. In 2019, they claimed the game would release in 2020. How long should COVID extend a year of dev time? Double it? Triple it? Quadrupole it? I don’t think COVID delays were instrumental in causing this debacle. None of those posts conveyed the state that the game was in accurately. If they did, everyone would have been shocked, given what the release date supposedly was! This applies to blogs in 2019-2022, because at any given time, release was supposedly only months away! Personally I read it as two things: 1) Frustration at being lied to wrt. “KSP 2: Lithobraking near you in 2020!” Where else should vent their frustration about KSP 2? Like I said, I find substantive forum threads to be largely rant-free. Others are not. Such is life. 2) A manifestation of concern over a beloved franchise and a would-be beloved game. That is why the issue of developer/manager competence is so present- we may have no control over it so talking about it is in that sense “useless”, but people will still want to talk about it because you add the long dev timeline + repeated false statements over the course of 3+ years and you have one hell of a concerning plot arch if you’re a fan of KSP. Exactly.

I don’t have an issue with Musk- my issue is that they said “KSP 2 is near!” in 2019! I don’t care who they said it to, they must have known it was wrong!

I think in their next apology they should apologize for this tweet from 2019: Or this post from 05/16/2022 where Nate Simpson claims that the FULL GAME will launch in early 2023: Notice how the first reply is someone saying, “that’s okay, take your time!” I think there is a misconception that people are fed up with the game being buggy or incomplete. I think that they’re mainly upset that the same game which these tweets concern is buggy and incomplete in 2023, despite these statements. They do not need to apologize for the game being unfinished, they should apologize for statements like these.

The first statement you made is incorrect. To illustrate: Charlie buys a new BMW. It takes 4 years more than anticipated to get to him, and when it does, the delivery driver says it’s still a prototype. When it gets to Charlie, it’s made of Lego and bursts into flames instantly. Should Charlie care about what happened in the four years prior to receiving his disastrous new car? Yes, ESPECIALLY IF HE CARES ABOUT BMW. Maybe, BMWs are now being assembled by toddlers who can only build with Lego, or maybe it’s run by incompetent leadership who direct their engineering team to use Lego. Either way, I would like to know! The assertion that what the devs have left to do is fix bugs is far from true. There are complicated, vital systems which have to be first developed, then integrated with each other. We don’t actually know how much of that has happened behind the scenes. There are probably still YEARS of serious game dev left to go. So again, the past DOES predict the future. Should fans of the game be ambivalent towards its future?

I partially agree with this but also partially disagree: I suspect that T2 knew they were forcing the game out in an uncooked state. Development was evidently proceeding at a snails pace, never mind whatever happened when they thought they were a year away from release in 2019, who knows about that. T2 execs were probably growing frustrated, and I would even hazard reasonably so, so they figured that a poor release and the ensuing ****storm would light a fire under the devs. However, I think this was probably a miscalculation. Whatever development issues there were, they should have been upfront about them. The community would probably react comparatively well to that, especially if the problems are technical in nature and not due to bad management or laziness. However now it is too late to do that, because it’s obvious that they misled people from 2019-2022/23 about how advanced the game supposedly was, and they charged $50. But they can’t cop to that, so the frustration festers and stews. So it was a miscalculation.

I don’t mind the heavily saturated, somewhat cartoonish look, actually. But I do think Blackracks clouds look better, and parallax looks better. I think making the clouds more varied and high-def and upgrading the terrain detail/rendering system would go a long way, even if they stick with the current style. Reflective grass has got to go, though.

[snip] You know what, you’re right. The naysayers on this forum are so dismissive, callous, and unintellectual. They just levy criticisms without logic or reasoning; I hate that.

When you go to a super public (popular) forum post like a dev blog, you are going to get popular opinion. It’s a general sentiment if you like the opinion, and an echo chamber if you don’t. I’m sorry you disagree with popular opinion about the game. In fact, if you go to the more substantive threads, there’s plenty of fruitful discussion, even optimistic discussion, about the ways the game might evolve. I’m going way out on a limb here- but I think some people deliberately traffic the more negative places so that they can feel righteous in their optimism. Kind of like looking out from a castle balcony onto all the scrubby peasants below, except the scrubby peasants are right to be upset, and you just disagree with them. You are conflating frustration with the devs for ill-will towards the game. Do you really believe the critics are on this forum but don’t like KSP? You are fighting an straw man. That’s a lot of words to say, “I disagree and think you all are irrational.” But point taken.

In my newest modded save with ~25 hours, I have something like 95 mods. There are a couple of regular bugs, but it’s like, stuttering for 10 secs and there are ways around them. Among my mods is galaxies unbound, which is awesome but kills the frame rate. That said, even my killed frame rate in KSP 1 is higher than my cremated frame rate in KSP 2.

Not to beat a dead horse, but… 2019: Game due in one year! 2020-2022: Game being delayed for maximum quality, because we like the game too! 10/2022: Actually, the game will have an EA! It’s next year. 2023: KSP 2 released in alpha (generously) state, for $50. Yeah, you’re going to have some negativity. I wish that 100% of the negativity came from well-thought-out, well-intentioned places, but remember, Dakota is being PAID to deal with it on behalf of the team! In the past few days there have actually been some great and productive discussions about certain game systems, especially resources. For me, though, those discussions have really hammered home how long the game has to go. We don’t have reentry heat yet (for example) and on this forum we’re discussing serious, fundamental issues with how to weave together systems which don’t even exist yet, as far as we know. This project is YEARS away from being done. For many people, myself included, who first started getting hyped four years ago, that is very frustrating. It gets expressed different ways on different platforms, by different people.

I was saying that with no restrictions, you could send 1000 launches per day. Thus, the exotic resource gameplay loop necessitates constraints on your standard methalox launching vehicles. So we are in agreement. Yes, I addressed this in my post. The “fail state” occurs if there is no automatic methalox/metals generation at KSC. I have to say refilling your reserves by timewarping before missions does not sound like rewarding gameplay. And why wouldn’t you gobble materials in supply runs? Without life support, there is no urgency to rescue missions, etc., and mission timing is usually irrelevant. Therefore, you can just timewarp enough to resupply whatever you’re resupplying, and take a short break from constant supply runs to launch another mission. This strategy will work until you have either large colonies that aren’t self-sufficient and need supplies from KSC, or until you have several colonies in several places. Remember: the goal of the simple (not exotic) supply system is to constrain the number of launches you can conduct at any one time. But, if time is not a factor, then why have the system at all? This argues for unlimited methalox/metals, but limited exotics which have to be mined for mid-late game engines. I don’t mean 1000 different routes- I mean 1000 rockets on the same route. Here’s an example that I think illustrates the essential conundrum: I’m constructing a new colony on the Mun. It needs ore and fuel to construct itself. The “efficient” solution would be to mine stuff on the Mun and build the colony from that stuff. That way, we avoid lugging stuff through Kerbins gravity well! However, what if I have infinite methalox and metal at the KSC? Then I don’t care about being “efficient” because in this case “efficient” means FUEL EFFICIENT but I have INFINITE FUEL! All I have to do is fly one supply mission to the Mun, fly back to KSC, (I can spend tons of stages and only get back with the crew because of unlimited metal), and set it to repeat that mission 1000 times to fully supply the colony with the metal it needs to construct. And just like that, I’ve bypassed an essential engineering challenge of deep space colonization, because I have infinite fuel at the KSC. In principle, this strategy could extend to anywhere, even other solar systems. If we don’t care that I can do this, and we don’t care about making ISRU important other than wrt. exotic resources, than this is fine. But, if we care about metal to build colonies, etc, then resources at the KSC have to be FINITE. Making them generate over time is not in principle finite, because the player can use infinite timewarp when there is no life support! You could say that the methalox regen rate is such that you could not continuously supply several colonies. Then, ISRU would be important again, at least once a colony is fully up and running, in order to not eat up supply bandwidth. But this is not overall a satisfying solution. So to summarize: - Effectively unlimited fuel/rocket parts = core engineering challenge of colonization bypassed, as long as there are no consequences of timewarping for arbitrary amounts of time. - Limiting fuel by making it regenerate with limited storage capacity is not a good solution because it can be overcome by tediously timewarping in the early game, and would probably be a useless or tedious restriction in the mid-late game because at that point it will probably be relatively trivial to mine resources ISRU, so the system is unnecessary and tedious. - Requiring players to mine/produce fuel and metal introduces a fail state where the player runs out of fuel and metal and can’t produce any more. - This issue arrises because we are basically trying to implement a funds system for the early game without using funds because having funds creates a restrictive and unrewarding gameplay loop.

That is debatable. Jeb Kerman from the top of a 10m high rocket that still wobbles uncontrollably: “Yes, and thank god for that!”

I think this is a good idea, but there is one issue in my mind, and it boils down to launching ships and using resources to build them. The KSP 2 devs said that they intend the game to play most similarly to science mode. If it requires metal, methalox to build/fuel rockets, then you could reach a fail state where you run out of those. Or, maybe there’s automatic resource collection on kerbin, but then the player would just be timewarping until their reserves are full. Either way, it’s either not a very rewarding gameplay loop or an outright fail state which I would be okay with, but many others, including the devs, are not. This issue of whether or not the player can build unlimited rockets is a fundamental one. It is especially important when it comes to automation, because with no restrictions imposed the player could automate 1000 supply launches a day from KSC. It’s also an issue that the playerbase doesn’t really know how to solve, I think, as you still see some people saying that rocket parts and fuel should be unlimited on Kerbin. So I’m interested in brainstorming, for sure. Maybe it warrants its own thread.

YES COMRADE!!!

If they allow automation with non-reusable ships, then presumably they would have a system whereby the player automatically commissions a rocket and fills it with supplies and launches it. Not having this sort of violates immersion to me in the same way that not allowing automated launches from the KSC does- it’s an arbitrary inability of the system. That could be just fine, or it could be a problem- I’m sure there would be lots of opinions about that. One issue with this may be that there is a phase of the progression when you are starting colonies on Mun/Minmus and it makes a lot of sense to be able to automate launches from KSC. However, as others have noted, this problem might be solvable by making the automation system such that it works by taking off and landing at the same place, and you have to fly that mission once before automating it, meaning you have to have a craft capable of at least going both ways- if not an SSTO. Although, this would introduce more limitations. For instance what if I wanted to: Deliver supplies from Mun —> Duna, pick up rare material at Duna —> deposit rare material at Minmus —> Wait at Minmus to be reassigned a new route. I think there should be an incentive against creating a rocket to do a supply run, and retiring it once said run is over, rinse and repeat. Either by decommissioning it when it gets to its destination, or by arbitrarily forcing a return journey, only to allow for the rocket to come back with only a capsule left. What inefficiency? If I have infinite fuel and resources to build rockets, then I can make a supply mission that takes off from KSC, supplies Mun, comes back and lands as a capsule, and then automate that. While there’s technically inefficiency there, it’s inefficiency with an unlimited resource, so who cares?

Ok I was just thinking about this: with supply rout automation but without funds, why would someone care about Kerbins gravity well? In terms of shipping supplies, why wouldn’t you just use the new automation system to send tons of launches from Kerbin? Will they limit the number of auto launches from KSC? So basically you could do infinite supply missions from KSC, but you would have to fly them all manually? That kind of ruins immersion/continuity for me. Or will they make time a more important feature? Like, rockets taking time to build, and it taking time to refurbish a launchpad after each launch, and roll out a new rocket? Essentially, without funds, I’m looking for a constraint that prevents players from simply launching many, many supply missions from KSC, even though it’s “inefficient.” If not funds, what is it not using efficiently? Time? Launching capacity?

Well, I would expect KSP 2 to temporarily increase players in the old game, which it did. But there’s no obvious reason why it would cause player to leave on net. Yes, this is my point. Why now? The timing is too specific to be coincidental, but I don’t know what actually happened to the 2.5k daily players that either left, or stopped using steam when KSP 2 released, but had been playing the game regularly for years up until that point.

@RalphKerman I’m sure you’re correct about how players launch the game- but I don’t think that explains the precipitous drop in player count after the KSP 2 release. Alternate launching methods means that the player count is always underrepresented- unless players who launch the game from steam quit in larger numbers than those who launch other ways. I would expect that to happen slowly- not all in one watershed event in one random February. In other words, why would 2.5k steam users all decide to drop the game in the same week? Other launching methods notwithstanding?

According to steamdb, KSP 1 daily max player count hovered around 5k since 2021 until the KSP 2 release when it spiked to 10k in the weeks preceding early access, before falling quickly to roughly 2.5k where it sits today. I would expect player count to go down over time, but KSP 1 seems to have had a big, loyal player base for 6+ years before it fell off a cliff at exactly the point when KSP 2 was released. Was half of the playerbase playing KSP 1 out of anticipation for the second game? Or did the catastrophe of KSP 2’s launch tank player enthusiasm for the whole IP, including the first game? All of this as some of the best, most incredible KSP 1 mods are being released like Parallax 2, blackracks clouds, etc. There’s even a procedural star system generating mod (I think it’s called infinite exploration or something like that). There’s never been more to do in KSP, and the player count has gone down and been stable at an all-time low level for months now. Any thoughts or explanations for this? I wouldn’t have guessed that KSP 1 was affected by the KSP 2 launch.