Master39

I won't enter the matter of the discussion, I haven't seen the video and I won't (never really liked Matt move from good gameplay videos to being yet another sensationalist infotainment gaming channel). But I've skimmed the thread, and I think it's missing an important consideration about Harvester being hesitant to talk about KSP2, or being careful, or whatever is the point of contention here even is. He is a developer releasing a new game, a new only marginally related game with a very different scope and size. Kinda like Obsidian when they released Outer Worlds. How well did it work for them presenting themselves in the marketing with those bold: "From the only true, real, original, and good creators of Fallout and Fallout New Vegas" claims? Well, sure enough Outer Worlds wasn't the Fallout NV 2 people hyped it up to be as a consequence, and they had to spend the last few weeks before release trying to set realistic expectations. Back to Harvester, Balsa never really took off, and I still haven't checked what's going on with the rebranding, but sure enough it's not a good idea to start comparing your still unreleased game/update/rebrand with another game, as it will almost certainly backfire.

The fact that you had to dive into Jool's atmosphere to make heat conduction between parts relevant kinda proves the point... Except there's no such a thing as a spaceplane heat tile in KSP, and generally used method for heat control during reentry, other than just being gentler with the profile, for spaceplanes is to just spin it as fast as possible to roast it evenly on both sides. Internal conduction between parts never* resulted in interesting gameplay in KSP1. Simplifying the never used simulation mechanics will allow to reduce the margin for error given that it can be expected from the player to understand how the simpler system works, thus making heat-related failure modes more common and easily achievable, increasing the overall challenge of the game. At some point in simulation complexity you stop adding gameplay challenges and turn it into tedium or into making the player feel like it's just a random system. *:ok except for Jool diving.

The day it released, that's why I was able to spot your BS before even opening the link. Don't try to spin things around. You said: And then proceeded to quote half of the question form the interviewer and half the reply from another person, very much not Nate Simpson. That's misleading and dishonest. I can understand an argument built on interpretation of vague answers, but straight faking quotes banking on the fact that nobody is going to bother with verifying them disquilfies you from the discussion in my eyes. [snip]

Nope, not even close, he pretty much evaded the question, just as I said. To me it sounds as someone that doesn't want to say that 1000 parts ships are still going to be a problem, but I'm sure I'm biased. Sure enough it doesn't sound like a implying a "yes" to the question, let alone actually promising 1000 parts ships.

The amount of "we can't talk about that" and "no comments", and the average (low) quality and seemingly improvised nature of most of Nate interviews makes me think otherwise. Here they're talking on a podcast that was new at the time, not CNN. Implies it's Nate talking. Implies it's only one person saying all of this, and that person being Nate. Conveniently you've also cut out all the discussion about the background simulation. That's misleading at best. There's a whole argument to be had about the gaming community making up Devs promises and then getting angry at things they've imagined while they over-hyped themselves to oblivion. A big part of it is that anyone trying to deflate hype and debunk fake lies is seen as an enemy twice at first then they don't blindly believe at everything the hype machine says, pointing out that nobody ever talked about something, or confirmed anything. And then after the game released when they say that the thing they where hyped about was never even mentioned by any actual dev. Then someone makes a list of lies on Reddit, or Crowbcat makes a video, both of which will be 90% wrong, but still saying it automatically puts you in a "you're the enemy" position. I'm still not saying that it's the case here, I'm more than open to receive a definitive piece of evidence, a recording or post from Nate saying "100000+ parts", but weirdly enough while everyone seems to agree that that was promised, the only examples are 2 interviews in which the devs clearly evade the question and are very careful at not committing to anything. Interviewer: "Mr. Dev, will your car have 5 doors?" Mr. Dev: "Well, doors, uh? It's a thing we're working on... You see, you can't have a car without doors, and we're working on this new type of hinges that will optimize the door utilization, allowing us to have a number doors on our car." The community: "You've heard that? They said the car will have 10 doors! And that hinges must be needed to flap the doors and fly, so fully autonomous flight capabilities too" The car releases, it has 3 doors, the community is mad because it can't fly.

I'd really like anyone to click on that link and listen for themselves who's talking about what, I'd begin maybe 30 seconds earlier, 1:13:30 to really get the full context.

Given that part count and the 1000000000000000000000000000+ parts "promise" came up again I think this (and the discussion that followed) is relevant: TLDR: In the famous promise Nate said they were working on allowing the player to build as big as the things shown in trailers. The "thing" shown in trailers was barely 524 parts, and that counting the spam of solar panels, with procedural solar panels you could easily cut another 150 parts from there (or just put a single nuclear reactor and cut all of the solar panels).

Purely fluff features usually don't have the same potential at bringing new sales and user as multiplayer does. IMHO, controversial opinion, IVA is a Fluff feature*, not spending time on it would make someone complain but it would die rather quickly and not make a dent in sales. Sadly, VR would be another such feature*, we VR users are too small of a niche to even move a rounding error amount of sales. But multiplayer? Seriously? You really think all those games wasting time and resources in implementing multiplayer it's all for nothing? *I want to make it very clear, I'm not saying that I don't want those, just that them missing wouldn't be a big deal marketing/sales wise. Retrofitting multiplayer into a single player code base causes 100000x the problems and headaches (Look at FO76, it was supposed to be a coop DLC for FO4). Even if all the stereotypes and misconceptions about "Fortnite kids" invading the game were to be true you still can play in single player. [Citation Needed] To me it looks like a lot of systems are far behind at the same time, I don't see how you could even hint at the idea that it's all to blame on multiplayer development somehow. It's not an easy feat, sure, but so are a hundred other things when you're rewriting KSP from scratch trying to avoid the same pitfalls.

You are ignoring all I said about player groups. You don't just join random Stellaris campaigns and start doing stuff. You know the other players beforehand, it's an organized thing and it probably takes a few games before you even try actually opposing empires (as in, trying to conquer each other). For the first few games you just enjoy mild competition, and the assurance that if the endgame crisis happens at the other side of a player's empire they're not going to block your fleet for some dumb "no military traffic" rule. Every game is going to leave behind someone at some point. In the case of coop game, based on collaboration instead of mindless conflict (or games in which conflict is a bit more complex than just clicking heads, such as Stellaris) that limit sits at player groups. For the best experience you need to be in a somewhat organized group or it won't work. It is like that for the vast majority of multiplayer games. That doesn't mean you have to be IRL friends with a ton of KSP2 players, just that you may open a topic somewhere here in the forum, find a few like-minded players, talk about the dos and don'ts maybe even write them down, and then you start playing, in a private game/server, with either a whitelist or a password, and frequent backups of the main save/world. If you don't like that GOOD, you be you, but it works, it's a tried and tested way, it's how most of the multiplayer games work. On bigger servers you may start having griefing problems or trolls around, but as always when trying to build something bigger than 10 to 15 people on the internet, at that point you need moderation and moderation tools, nothing new here. I don't know what are the expectations here, to me it's obvious that you don't play some games with random people. If I want to start a D&D campaign I'm not going to stop random people on the sidewalk and scream at them: "Hello Sir, you are now the Dwarf warrior in my D&D campaign, here's your D20, roll Initiative".

Depends on what you're trying to do, I wouldn't constantly use it, but I can see lots of scenarios even if I'm not even actually playing multiplayer. I've lost the count of how many times I had someone stream me their monitor on Discord to get my help to fix some problem with a craft or a rocket. Or if we're building a space station together, planning all the modules at the same time in the same VAB would be quite useful. Then every player can take their sub-assembly and build their rocket separately and launch simultaneously from the different launchpads. And, the game is confirmed to have multiple VABs, so it's not like you have to do it simultaneously. It's all about choice. At the most basic level, players are smarter than the AI empires, no matter of how good or complex they make the AI. Even if you're not interacting directly the politics play a huge role in the game, everything you do as an impact on the game universe and can change things for everyone. In KSP2 you're going to have an even bigger and more direct impact on the players, you don't have to be synced with someone and be in the same physics bubble to benefit from their infrastructure. Look at the Mars sample return mission plan, bring it into KSP, the player playing ESA and NASA would never have to actually interact directly to complete the mission.

They're similar as in they are all mostly coop games, in which you play things together, mostly played in small servers. Agree. Agree. That's why I brought in Stellaris a few replies ago. You can go a full campaign without ever directly interacting with the other players, and yet people enjoy their multiplayer games nonetheless, and it goes similarly for basically any strategic game with a fog of war system, coop or otherwise. But that's not all, it was never confirmed that the VAB is not multiplayer (not to speculate, but if you were to implement that and disable the multiplayer it would absolutely look like a mere system to build multiple vessels at the same time), and they've already talked about an asynchronous system to deal with time warp. None of this are insurmountable problems, but, again, I'm not forcing anyone to play multiplayer.

No, most multiplayer games are designed around teams of 2 to 6 people. If you go solo you WILL have a bad experience in most games. Finding someone is the solution to that. Again, I'm not saying that you must play multiplayer or how you should play them, just describing how that world works. The other is not the same kind of multiplayer game, had nothing in common with it, and the only ones making parallels apparently never played any multiplayer game in their lives. Factorio, Minecraft, Stellaris, Trailmakers, Stationeers, Space Engineers, Valheilm, Satisfactory... Let's use examples that are at least relevant to the discussion at hand, shall we?

Fun fact I haven't voted because I feel it lacks on the other side of the spectrum too. I'm going to be the host, the server is going to be my single player save, and I'm going to play a lot more than the rest of my playgroup, which will probably buy the game after MP drops. Technically speaking, "I will mostly play single player, but I'm also going to engage in multiplayer." is the most accurate description of my situation, but it's also the farthest possible from it conceptually.

If you're not coming here with the idea that people playing multiplayer are only interested in "Shooter 23 from Megacorp", you're not not so subtly hinting at the idea that they are too dumb to play KSP, that the only possible outcome is griefing of your work, or that the game is somehow too much for the attention span of the multiplayer crowd then those weren't pointed at you. I'm not telling people that they should enjoy multiplayer if they don't, just trying to shine some light in a huge portion of gaming that, when it comes to this forum, is only seen through the worse possible stereotypes and misconceptions. The narrative brought by people clearly not interested in multiplayer is as far from the actual experience as it can possibly be, they're thinking Fortnite or LOL when we have a ton of examples of games that are way more similar to how KSP2 multiplayer is going to be. I love D&D, but sadly in my group we never managed to start a successful campaign (We can manage the time in games like Minecraft and Factorio because we can play even if someone is missing, and we usually do). If I can borrow it as an example what is happening every time we talk about multiplayer on these forums is that what the Dev talk about is a D&D campaign and people react by using as an example and taking at face value the common jokes and memes about Monopoly breaking up families.

You're constantly switching between a general argument about multiplayer gaming to your specific situation. You are making the personal choice not to know new player groups, and are in the specific situation of not liking the games your friends like to play (or not having the hardware to do so). That's totally fine, it's your choice, nothing wrong with it. But that has nothing to do with the general situation, multiplayer gaming is designed around player groups, a ton of games similar to what KSP-2 is going to be are basically impossible to play with random people, the already mentioned Factorio or Stellaris are good examples of that.

IMHO If you don't have a playgroup you're playing wrong.

It's not abut the fact that everyone has to play every game in Multiplayer. I'm just pointing out that the kind of audience that only play a specific game when they can do so with friends exist, and the kind of bad experiences people point out are more the consequence of the lack of a play group than anything else. I never finished Factorio alone, not that I haven't started some solo games, but usually when I have the itch to get back to that kind of game my friends soon follow suit and we just start another multiplayer run. But I play other games in the genre, my 58 hours on DSP would be 3x that if only that game was multiplayer, and I don't think I would have endured the 22 hours of Satisfactory without a friend to suffer through it with me. And, right now, I'm back to the origin, a modded Minecraft, Create, Immersive, Mekanism, always with the same play group. Most multiplayer is like this, being it Minecraft, "Shooter 3506", LOL, Overwatch, Armello, Sea of Thieves or whatever else, most people don't go solo and deal with randoms, people usually have playgroups, if anything to use as an excuse when someone asks them why they're still playing that, old, objectively terrible, P2W game (we all collectively had a blast playing FO76). KSP2 with the announced 4 agencies with 4 players each max (if I didn't get it wrong) seems to be targeting to that audience and that kind of gameplay.

For the first FEW HOURS of a Stellaris game you don't even know where the other players are or what they're doing, a game is long and you can play the first few sessions without ever seeing one of the other players you're playing with, if you do one or two sessions a week, you can go on for a couple of weeks before you actually interact for the first time with another player empire. And that's just for the first contact, both cooperation or war aren't that straightforward or obvious, you can find yourself at opposite sides of a lot of things, the map, the political spectrum, an alliance, a war, and often enough you interact from far away and in indirect ways. And yet MP is a huge thing for that game, and games like it, slow interactions never was a problem for gaming. Yes, I get it, tons of people around here don't have a group of friends that is interested in KSP, my point is, those groups of friends exist out there, and it's a prevalent phenomenon. Even among people "violent 13 years old gamerz" playing at "Shooter 385" (that doesn't sound elitist at all) or MMOs you usually don't play solo but more often go with friends, a club, a guild or some sort of play group, especially for team-based games, you're not really playing seriously if you go solo (in those games). Again, when Microsoft had to offer a paid service for Minecraft multiplayer they didn't open huge servers, or minigames, which are the most obvious choice if you only superficially know the game (Just open an official Hypixel equivalent, no?) but decided to capture the true invisible audience, they started hosting small servers, the Realms, for smaller friend groups. I'd argue that most multiplayer gaming is like this, you play a game because your friends also play it and solo players jumping in with randoms are the exception. PS Suggestion if anyone want to get into any MP game: DONT PLAY/INTERACT WITH RANDOMS. Just search a small community/guild/forum/discord server that has a beginner section and start from there, if that group is toxic just leave them and try another one. It will make any game a lot more enjoyable.

In case you missed it: KSP is not going to be a multiplayer game like the ones you have been traumatized from, so why even worry? It's the term itself? Would it be better if we called it a "coop" game instead? BTW What you describe applies to most of the internet, and by most standards the rules of this forum are quite draconian (Not that I disagree with them).

That's just a description of how multiplayer works in probably half of the games out there. When "Multiplayer" became a term uniquely limited to MMOs or games with matchmaking and random people? It's not like "normal" multiplayer games are unpopular or niche, what you describe is exactly how the multiplayer for Minecraft mostly* works, you know, the best selling game of all times. * Yes I know there are massively populated Minecraft servers in which you play with randos, I used to manage one, but that's not the most popular multiplayer gamemode. Private, small, servers and shared saves between friends are (Otherwise the main paid multiplayer mode wouldn't be Realms, which is exactly that, small private servers for friends).

The more multiplayer topics I read on this forum the sadder I get for the kind of experiences that must have traumatized the KSP community to get to this level of apprehension towards multiplayer. KSP may be difficult on a conceptual level, yes you have to learn orbital mechanics, they're not easy. But as a game is not harder than Modded Factorio or Minecraft, or strategy games like Stellaris, and flying may be a hard skill to learn, but it's not any harder than landing headshots in an FPS, learning how to position yourself as a tank in an hero shooter or driving in a race game. What it is that makes it get stale faster than Minecraft or Factorio? I think we're all missing a whole category of players, I have 230 hours on Factorio, not a lot compared to other more dedicated players, but enough to count as more than the playtime I have on most AAA games. I never finished a single run in single player, I'm simply not interested in doing so. For me Factorio is a multiplayer game and every so often I start a new run with the same friends I've always played it with for the past few years. I bet there's plenty of people not interested in single player runs, but that will jump to the game as soon as they can build something together, maybe with that friend of them constantly talking about Kerbal. I know at least a few.

Good example, now weld all those struts together, you save half the parts and lose none of the creativity, add orbital construction to the equation and you also remove all the parts needed to launch it from the ground (I get what the challenge here is, I'm just pointing out that high part counts are not strictly required for that kind of gameplay)

I linked a post of mine made in 2020 in which I was talking about "mosaics of MK3 spaceplane parts" already, that has always been my stance on the matter. There's a serious discussion to be had here on parts counts and bigger parts, about what end of the spectrum hampers creativity more. You brought up Lego, in the Lego AFOL community I've seen a certain diregard for the creativity needed to build somethin past a certain scale, it's difficult to convey a specific type of car at minifig scale than it is when you make it half a meter long, at some point it just becomes a matter of how much money you can spend for a certain build, or, back to KSP, how much performance you can throw at the ship. I'm pretty sure that building a 1:1 replica of the Rocinante out of Oscar B fuel tanks is going to result in a ton of custom made tiny details, but also be unplayable in both KSP 1 and 2. But the argument wasn't about that, it was specifically about the truss segments and solar panels. We already know that the Devs went with bigger parts, that engine is a single part, and they've showed it back in 2019, I was merely talking about welding together truss segments or providing longer ones. I repeat my statement: There's no creativity lost if they give us 50m or 500m long parts instead of forcing us to line up dozens of 5m ones.

I don't think if the game will ever be able to sustain a 1000 parts launch from Kerbin, still, due to a number of choices of game design, I'm more than convinced that such stations and ships as the one shown in that footage are more than possible. Again, the station is half of the 1000 parts target, the Devs clearly claimed that bigger rockets should not be wobbly, meaning less things to simulate at that size, bigger parts will reduce the need for spam of smaller ones too, further reducing part counts, and, finally, orbital VABs and delivery routes means you can build stuff directly in orbit, removing hundreds of parts of launch veichles from the equation. All of that points towards a game in which ships and colonies as big as the one shown will be possible well within KSP-1 parts count limits, even disregarding potential future optimization of KSP-2 code. [snip] That only works in your over-generalizarion. As if most 1000+ ships weren't actually almost entirely made out of 3 or 4 different MK3 fuselages (admittedly we evolved a bit part that, now we can include fairings and flags too, so what's it, 6 parts?), have you even seen the Shadowzone bit you pointed me to in your last reply? Wasn't everyone happy about procedural wings because they drastically reduce the parts count of planes while also increasing the creativity? And it's not a new thing I'm making up on the spot just to adere to some narrative, I've been talking about "mosaics of MK3 parts" at least since 2020, and repeatedly after that. That's quite far away from they've promised us 1000+ parts ships" and, again, I'm not even claiming they've not said it [snip]

That may hamper the ability to use colony parts in normal crafts, but yes, I imagine having a difference of some sort between crafts and buildings would simplify things a lot. And there's also the matter of what Nate said recently about wobbly rockets, ships and stations that size aren't supposed to wobble at all, which is a great source of optimization if you just weld them together.