GGG-GoodGuyGreg

Sadly, based on current performance, at most I think we’ll see the Science Update in 6 Months, and I call that on the optimistic side. Unless it’s an EA of Science Now about this next patch. Seeing as it’s announced for next week, Is there concrete information somewhere about exactly what it’s going to contain? Which bug fixes and which new parts or features if the case?

Speaking of this, could someone with much better memory than mine tell me if I remember correctly that, around launch, it was suggested re-entry heating will be “turned on a bit later” in KSP2 (to avoid further performance losses), and that that it just needs to be turned on later, suggesting it was more or less ready? Also, I remember similar talks, shortly after launch, from people taking a peek inside game files, who concluded a lot of future features or roadmap items, while currently not visible to players, are there in the background, in the later stages of development, and it will be smooth sailing from here onwards. Haven’t seen updates to those claims since then, wonder what happened and if true, why those low hanging fruits are simply left there to rot.

Not the splash we expected when they said they want to spend more time on updates to make more progress from patch to patch.

You seem to forget it was already delayed even with the updated extended cadence. So unless this patch is groundbreaking compared to the previous ones, I don't see how it's worth it to get patches 2 times slower. It's good this performance issue was identified before pushing the patch, but what in the world is going on over there?

Wish more AMA's were like this one, a very balanced selection of questions covering both present and future things to look forward to. Great job Chris. Godspeed!

Ok. I heard this argument a lot of time but I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Multiplayer is not something you simply decide if you want to add at the end. It impacts the development time significantly to build with multiplayer in mind, it also impacts how deep you can realistically go with new features, and if you just decide too late you aren’t doing multiplayer, you delivered updates much slower and features that are too simple.

I read this as they are now prioritizing other features like the Science Update before Multiplayer.

I couldn't find any thread discussing patch 0.1.4 that was announced for Aug 22 (way over the promised update cadence) so gonna post here as any such threads appear to be merged here for some reason although the topic is this one patch itself, not the entire KSP2 EA. It appears this patch comes 2 months after the previous one, so in total this accounts for one third of the total dev time from launch, and I couldn't find concrete information about what this patch contains (also there appears to be no dev announcement about this and I could only find one on Steam but not here for some reason), and I don't know how this is still a problem after this bad communication style has been many times criticized countless times already by the players. Wonder if in the upcoming AMAs this will be clarified and we will find out if this patch that took so long was worth the wait. The only good outcome is they finally somehow admitted it may have been a tall order and said they are going to think twice about the future of Multiplayer, which IMHO is much better than dropping KSP2 entirely.

Not when they claim every feature and every bug fix is tested to support multiplayer. Even if they decide to drop multiplayer, we would still have been slowed down by it and I’m sure it also means you have to consider multiplayer when you decide how complex future features are.

Yeah, sure, Colonies, Interstellar and you forgot Multiplayer. Problem is you need to be able to walk before you can run, and so far we didn't even see one small step.

The reason I do not think this is true is it would be a low hanging fruit in 6 months to bundle a few of these systems and wow everyone and get some more sales and reputation, it would also be like that moment when people were genuinely cheering the iOS when they finally got Copy & Paste after 2 years, when Android had it on day one.

Well, their problem is they spaced out the updates even more. This gets you more time but it further increases expectations for what your updates contain, and I’m not yet sure if it was wise of them or not. I hope they delay the patch to add more features, instead of coming up with an update comparable to what we had before when the space between them was much smaller. I have a similar feeling that they bit more than they can chew. I hope they do the right thing and leave the smart people some room to work and talk, and quit marketing nothing burgers.

Still, it could be worse. It could be a DLC.

Who is getting fired this time? jk

It's way too early to tell what Multiplayer is going to be like. It's also kind of funny how we still didn't even get the first item on the roadmap, so I reckon we're at least a year or two away from Multiplayer and Interstellar, yet these features get discussed a lot with many people (including myself) have concerns over how these features should or shouldn't be like when most likely these features are still in the concept phase.

So what exactly from the progress so far points you to the conclusion that the game is headed in the right direction? There hasn't been a whole lot of chunky game updates to really say which direction the game actually taking, and if you're talking about the bugfixes I would argue bug fixes can't be an indicative of the game direction, as it's pretty clear the game needs fixing. Each to his own opinion but I as many others expect the Science update to be the first sign that tells us where the game is actually heading.

Definitely yes. This is not the kind of progress people will expect from an EA priced at 90% of the full price.

As someone who designs Interfaces, I can see why there is resistance to change, it always happens like this, especially when benefits aren’t present or worth it. However, I think the real problem is the density (or lack of adjustment of it) of the interface. The UI we have today is pretty tech demo-ish and I don’t expect it to remain this way. If the Gods are willing and the game actually progresses through the entire roadmap, I’m pretty sure the final interface will be changed a lot or will evolve into something very different. I don’t think we’ll ever have a classic interface from the developers, but I do expect the modding community to do it.

I think the smoking gun here is Multiplayer + Interstellar. Unless you have a lot of Rockstar developers, I reckon you have to dumb down mechanics even compared to KSP1, to be able to pull off all that and a more welcoming game for younger people and/or that are new to the franchise (this latter was a pillar Nate mentioned). Personally I’ll be greatly disappointed if this turns out to be true. And if it does I would just use KSP2 to have fun with my kid and just use KSP with RP-1, which was obtained for a fraction of the price, when I want to go hardcore.

I, for one, will know when I get to see this feature implemented. And I don't mean to be pessimistic, it's just that even a seemingly bad concept can work if it's well integrated with the rest of the game mechanics and it "clicks" into place.

Something else I smell. And it ain’t pretty.

Fun analogy, except that they didn't yet give me the breakfast yet (Science Update, because what we have now is more like just bread and butter) and I had to pay the entire check in advance (including dinner and desert) and before I was sat at the table I've been told all I ordered will follow shortly, however, after a closer look, I can clearly see no one is in the kitchen.

Well you gotta have weekly challenges and schedule AMAs, right? Also one doesn't simply start selling the skin off of the living bear in the woods, you gotta plan it in advance... This is all I'll say

Think of it as an investment. A risky and very slow one.

We're in the same boat. While an interesting dev insight, this also leads me to believe it's still in concept phase, which would have been fine if this dev insight would have been released 1-2 years ago, but today it just angers me to think I paid almost full price and only now I see core mechanics are being in concept phase !? I'm pretty sure it wasn't even the slightest hint in interviews, announcements and communication pre-launch at the fact that KSP2 EA will launch without re-entry heating, and that it will be included with the science update which itself will follow towards autumn '23 if we're lucky. I don't know who thought a core mechanic like re-entry heating could possibly come bundled as a milestone update. It only leads me to this example of why this is a bad practice: Why was is it so hard to be upfront about this before launch, "hey, these following features that KSP1 has [insert bullet points], will not be there at launch and they will follow in more than half a year, maybe towards the end of the year, as a rough estimation." I can only say that this is "winging it" or ill intent. Rather than make a quick buck and get more than 50% negative reviews, it would have been more beneficial for your reputation, if you care about it, to have less people buy it initially (which would have no surprise between asking price and what they get) and then more people slowly buy once you EARN their trust by clear communication and clear development goals with deadlines that are being met. There, I said it. Deadlines. Being able to talk about concrete deadlines separates people that know what they are doing from the others.