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(Take two on convincing the community to be nice (take one) because the first one did not work and I’m more stressed about it this time) Ok so, as it seems, I’m not having an easy time motivating myself to stay active on this community. You may be familiar with my first post. The schism is still here, and therefore I still have more stuff to complain about. So, I’m going to make another post, even longer this time, hopefully this time with better formatting and active correction to remove bias. I really just want this whole thing to calm down. the schism As everyone who’s ever poked KSP2 or these forums with a 39-and-a-half-foot-pole has noticed, there’s a big schism in the community between what is basically two parties engaging in passive aggressive discourse on basically every single forum topic in this entire freaking subforum, even on other sections of the greater forums as a whole. The two sides, as I see it, are: On one side, there are people who have trust in the developers, and believe in a future for the development of KSP2. They see patience as a necessity to a good community, despite the fact a full release was expected 3 years ago. They think the devs aren’t bad people, and they deserve trust and patience. The vision they dreamed of for KSP2 is coming, and all they need is to sit tight and encourage the developers. Eventually, one day, the version of KSP2 they get heart palpitations just thinking about will be here. A few (not all!) members of this side deny there is anything wrong with KSP2, and see genuine constructive criticism as bad. On the other side, there are people who have little to no trust in the developer team’s competency. They see the 6 months of little tangible feature development as a sign that KSP2 is dead, dying, or doomed. The devs did an awful job launching, and the game probably won’t survive very long before T2 pulls the plug on funding. They typically provide genuine constructive criticism of the game, usually with tone issues. Often they think the developers overpromised or are otherwise incapable of meeting their promises, and that the dev team is inefficient or slow at development. A few (not all!) members of this side think KSP2 is a cash grab scheme, or think everyone who bought into the game early has been intentionally misled and can’t see reality. Where do I stand? Well, in the past, I’ve been pretty firmly in the first group, and I think I still am to some degree. However, as I step back a bit, I see the development is going really rough. The game is certainly lackluster in comparison to modding its predecessor, and I enjoy and play KSP1 way more right now. The devs are doing all they can to maintain a positive public image, and can’t, because let’s be honest, the launch was really frickityfracking awful. Communication issues, performance scares, and the incredibly buggy nature of the release has huge and long-lasting effects. Player count is not going up. Things are Not Great. But, how I see it, in my personal opinion, the devs still deserve some slack. The devs faced extreme hardships, and they deserve patience. In my opinion, any predatory release tactics are probably T2’s fault (like, honestly, it’s kinda like, their whole identity at this point in the gaming community). KSP2 is objectively not very good right now, but recently the devs have managed to remove a TON of huge and pressing bugs. Performance has freaking skyrocketed, pun intended, and multiple people I know are now capable of running it on their machines. Foundations have been getting put in place for future updates. I have trust in the developers and a good belief that KSP2 will, one day, a year or three down the line, meet its promises, and I will be encouraging and patient. But honestly I’m not here to talk about all that. I’ve got like, a much more pressing problem to talk about. the actual issue of the schism I’m not here to focus and fixate on the squabbles. I hate to participate in them, they make me feel icky. I don’t want to fuel the fire, because it’s an objectively really really big and long-winded fire that I subjectively just want to see the end of. I think my last post contributed to the fire, because more of it than I’d like was centered around “no guys devs actually good”, but I realize standing behind my opinion and tainting the possibility of neutrality of my post probably detracted a lot from it and was in general disagreeable to the side I wasn’t a part of. That’s why I’ve cut down on that, and I’ll be spending the next obscene number of pages focusing on this community. The fact there’s a schism at all is harrowing, is it not? Let’s think about what both sides have in common: we’re all fans of KSP or KSP2. We’re all astrophysics majors, rocket scientists, dorky nerds who like space, armchair engineers, computer scientists, and geeky nerds who play with model rockets in their backyard. We all are disappointed by the state of KSP2. We all looked at the trailer and probably died of heart attack at least three times each. Nobody can say that KSP2 is really superior to KSP1 with mods, in terms of performance, features, playability, stability, support, customizability and in some cases even graphics too. We all have been impacted by the really awful launch. We all participate in the community, regardless of whether we argue or just chat or just lurk, and want to play a fun game. What differences do we have? Well, one side thinks KSP2 will be good and the devs deserve slack, and one side thinks KSP2 won’t be good or that the devs are meanies. Well, when you stack it up like that, it seems kinda silly how we’ve driven a wedge between the two parties who both just wish they could enjoy KSP2 as much as the release trailer promised. We’re all KSP dorks who just wanted a cool sequel like the one in the trailer. We can all agree we don’t have that yet. Is it coming? Depends on who you ask. I think so, but my opinion is not relevant to this part of the post. I’ve stayed off the forums for a while. I’ve lurked a lot, checking the forums basically daily, since my last post. Most of my interactions with the community since then have been posting youtube videos and responding to comments on the original post. I tried to come back and have a good time, but the sense there was this unkillable beast of flame wars and tension writhing in one of the most active categories of this forum is at least a little unsettling. It says a lot about the lack of coherence and unity in the community if people can split themselves for OVER HALF A YEAR over an issue like this. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a huge and stressful issue. But how I see it, this is no excuse for how we (me included) have been treating others on the forum. we are the schism. that's us. Here’s a friendly reminder: Community is everyone. Community is you specifically. Community is also me. Community is also my friend Steve. Community is also the mod & dev teams. Community is every member who reads this page or responds. Community is a Lot of people. In fact, community, as it so happens, is all of us. We did this. Nobody is at not at fault to some degree. We’re to blame. We’re responsible for fixing this, me included, you included, and we’re responsible for being nice to the community (this includes everyone in the community). As a community it is OUR duty and responsibility to not be mean or blind about it. WE are the community. Please take a second to just read over this paragraph and internalize it. This post here is the next chapter of my participation in trying to patch the schism, but no one single dweebus such as myself can do this alone. But seeing the state of these forums doesn’t give me confidence we can recover naturally anyways. We’ve already torn this huge gap in the community, and if we don’t close it, that gap will stay there. If it’s announced tomorrow that funding gets slashed severely, there will still be individuals who claim that the devs will rise from the ashes and miraculously make one of the most ambitious video games in gaming history. If KSP2 miraculously gets an update tomorrow that makes it completely exactly how we all wanted it, colonies and interstellar included, hundreds of handcrafted star systems, there will still be individuals who claim it doesn’t meet standards and bash it on the forums. Not one year ago, the KSP forums community was a freaking amazing place to be. We’d all go screw around with silly mods, make cool videos, share epic screenshots, say “guys won’t KSP2 be so cool when it releases” while ogling at some dev videos, and collaborate together with massive and elaborate community projects, and I would be hard pressed to find a single genuine insult anywhere on the forums, which still had like bajillions of active members. I really miss that community. I want it back, if that’s okay with you guys. I don’t like this place very much right now, and I can’t convince myself to stay active here for very long, because I simply don’t like the vibes that like 40% of the forums radiates and the other 60% is actively trying to ignore or pretend isn't a problem. Multiple people have left the forums before my eyes due to this issue, some even having directly contacted me to talk to me about it, because what I described in my first post is exactly why they left. This is a genuine issue. These forums are not as fun to stay in as they used to be, and the sense of unity and community and fun is severely damaged. This is a genuine concern I genuinely raise about the genuine state and genuine future of these forums. I don’t know how else to emphasize “guys this is a problem, we should fix it together”. If this post hasn’t convinced you “maybe we should be nicer to eachother” then I don’t know what to do, since this is the last thing I can think of to do, unless I wanna write four thousand words next time I make a big post. Which I don’t feel like doing. Please don’t make me have to write another post. I have carpal tunnel. ok, cool, whatever, so what do you propose we do then, dweebus? I genuinely don’t know. My guess is to start along the lines of “be nice” but that’s a lot easier said than done. I’ve seen a lot of mean comments thrown at people. I’ve seen a lot of passive aggressive ickiness from both sides. I’ve seen a lot of people just joke and make fun of other people for having an opinion that is not theirs. I’ve seen people start cursing out eachother or even hurling slurs over something as silly as “should there be this thing in this silly computer program about silly green aliens doing rocketry” or perhaps “why isn’t this thing here in this silly computer program yet”. And, mind you, this is all the stuff I’ve seen AFTER the moderation team filtered out the worst and most rulebreaking attacks. I’m not a mod, so I have absolutely no clue what the worst of the worst looks like. All I know is what I’ve seen can only be the tip of the iceberg. So what I propose is maybe just like, let’s all collectively resist the urge to yell at people who don’t share our opinion. Let’s also collectively resist the urge to yell at people who yell at us. Those usually are conducive to a good community, I would assume. Maybe we can set some collective terms for what we want, such as “constructive criticism is good but let’s be nice about it”, or maybe “let’s all agree KSP2 isn’t perfect yet”, or even perhaps the apparently very controversial and difficult to understand “i don’t like to be called a [insert long string of swear words]”. Those seem like reasonable demands to make of our friends and allies here in the community. But I don’t have a good idea of what we as a community should do. These situations probably have a lot more nuance to them than I can immediately think of, and my solutions aren't easy nor universal. I don't have an objectively untinted view of the situation, and I don't have a bird's eye view like moderators or developers might. I, as a dweebus member of the forums with no qualifications, really do want you all to collaborate and work together to find a way to make things better here. I want people to start thinking of ways to make the community a less toxic and flame-infested place, and I can’t do it alone. I'm not that good with people. Plus, you can’t do it alone either, since you too are just one person. Can we perhaps do this together please? I’d like to think this post is less of “i’m complaining, but loudly, and then some people agreed with me” like last time, and more “call to action to help actually make the community less mean to eachother” or perhaps even “open letter” in style and purpose. Like seriously I really just want me and everyone else to be able to enjoy the community like we did before. I really want us to be a unified, collaborative community again. It really hurts to see people just being like this to eachother. a conclusion i guess Ok, so, to recap: we’re all being mean to eachother, despite the fact we’re pretty similar in the end. This is bad, because being nice to eachother is good. We should all make an effort to be nicer, so that people stop leaving and people start enjoying the forums more. Nobody likes to be insulted, and we are all friends here on the forums. I propose we collaborate to do this, since we can’t really do all this alone. Please help us help eachother, which would include you. Stay tuned next time, for in 4 months I'll write 5k words on this exact same issue!! (this is a joke) (this post is prone to edits for grammar, spelling and tone. it is open to polite constructive criticism. please do not insult me or anyone else in the comments for the love of heck.) TL;DR: please be nice thanks