The 'new forum' is a joke.

[cantab]

I know that everyone is dealing with this joke differently, but if you guys could not start flame wars with each other that would be great.

Please don't get hostile with each other here, that is against the rules. We are watching the thread, so don't post things that would get you in trouble.

Sounds like Kasper's made a bunch of work for the mod team. Which is probably the best deterrent against any repeat prank announcements

[katateochi]

I can't believe I fell for this!! Totally sucked in and spilt my tea.

edit - I ain't mad though, but I am going to have words with my critical faculties for sleeping on the job.

Edited March 21, 2015 by katateochi

[Thomas988]

How did it hurt anyone? No one lost money. No one was injured, no one lost any property. No one had personal private information divulged. The only thing that got hurt was your pride and ego. Sorry, that's not getting hurt.

True, true. But that moment of harsh surprise plenty of us felt was pretty bad. People like RAINCRAFTER even said they're on the verge of quitting the forums because of that instance. Not too good for Squad's public relations.

No, technically that doesn't count as "getting hurt," but still I believe some of us shouldn't be scared by that post like we were, no matter how gullible we are.

[shadowsutekh]

Sounds like Kasper's made a bunch of work for the mod team. Which is probably the best deterrent against any repeat prank announcements

It's not a lot of work, I just don't like people thinking they can post whatever they want just because they may be upset because they took something poorly.

[bigyihsuan]

Sure, I now get that's an April Fool's joke, but some of the things in the "post" actually would be nice to have, like the auto-thread-merge thing.

[jefferyharrell]

I do hope that most people realised that Squad would never do this sort of a thing

I don't think you understand what it's like to be a Squad customer.

In December, you guys decided to call your alpha game "beta." Nobody thought this was a good idea. The game was too unfinished and unpolished to go into beta testing. But you guys called it "beta" so okay, we customers got ready to start seeing fixes for the literally hundreds of major gameplay-ruining bugs that we lived with all through the alpha period. Because that's what "beta" means: It means bug fixes, and lots of them.

In the three months since, you guys have fixed exactly zero bugs. Not a single one.

So we customers were already feeling kind of crapped on. It's a beta, huh? So where are the bug fixes? Three solid months without a single bug fix? That's not a beta. That's abandonware.

And then you guys started in with the girl kerbal thing. Okay, whatever I guess. Literally every player who wanted girl kerbals has had them through Texture Replacer, so you were pimping a solution in search of a problem, but hey, it's your game, you do what you want. If you want to make a big stink about girl kerbals instead of fixing bugs during the beta period, I guess that's your business. Meanwhile we customers will just sit here and become increasingly frustrated with your game because it keeps crashing and our ships keep exploding for no reason and our kerbals keep getting jettisoned off ladders for no reason while you guys waste a ton of time doing non-gameplay-related renderings of a new character who will have exactly no impact on the actual game itself.

And then it was oh, we're rewriting the entire aerodynamics system. Why didn't you just write Ferram a check and buy FAR? No idea, you decided to write your own. Instead of fixing bugs. During the beta. Three months after the beta started, in fact.

And then it was oh, we're doing payload fairings. We've already GOT payload fairings, guys, and we love how they work. Yours aren't going to be as good as Procedural Fairings? Then why are you wasting your time? Instead of fixing bugs? Cause the Mac version still can't run with full-res textures, you know. Because your memory leaks crash the game. Constantly. And you haven't fixed any of them. Despite promising to when you called it "beta."

AND THEN just a few days ago all of a sudden it was "Oh, geez, we bit off more than we can chew, and now we have to cut some of these AWESOME NEW FEATURES so we can spend a little time fixing a few bugs." Why are you spending any time on new features? The game is in beta. It's been in beta for three months. Why haven't you fixed all the bugs already? Why haven't you released 0.91, 0.92 and 0.93 already so your customers can beta test them for you? And then you guys were all "Gee, what do you think, customers? You have to choose between new features and having a game that you don't hate for all its bugs. Which would you prefer?"

Talk about your all-time award-winning stupid questions.

So when you posted your ha-ha-so-funny-little-joke, you know how we all reacted? With complete credulity. Because there was nothing in it, not a single thing in it, that sounded out of character for Squad. Every single word of it sounded exactly like something the Squad of the past three months would try to pull. It wasn't outlandish or ridiculous, man. It was just par for the course.

This should chill you guys to the bone. You guys should have a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach right now. Because we believed it. Because it sounded exactly like something you guys would pull on us.

Stop being like this, Squad. Please. You guys used to be pretty okay, as indie game developers went. Your quality control was terrible and you had a bad reputation for excessive employee turnover, but your customers in general were willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

That's over now. You guys have squandered your customers' good will.

Earn it back. Please.

[Malah]

in 2020 the April Fools will be in December...

[RocketPilot573]

I didn't really have any reaction to this. I saw some dollar sign symbols followed by number digits, then I closed the tab and went on with my day.

[cpast]

in 2020 the April Fools will be in December...

Eh, that also happens for every other holiday.

[billbobjebkirk]

-snipped long rant-

Are you happy to know that 1.0 will be spending more time in the bugfixing cycle than any update has before?

[Vanamonde]

I don't think you understand what it's like to be a Squad customer.

We moderators are Squad customers.

[mythbusters844]

Are you happy to know that 1.0 will be spending more time in the bugfixing cycle than any update has before?

But the thing is, 1.0 is apparently going to be the actual release of the game (not counting future updates). This means that if they let any major bugs slip to the release (as they have done so in the past), they'll face immense criticism by, well...critics. However, if they release it as a beta update, the community will be able to find the major bugs of the game for Squad to (hopefully) fix. Also, this might be personal opinion, but I think Jeffery's "rant" about the game is succinct and articulate and perfectly describes some issues in relation to Squad and their practices.

Edited March 21, 2015 by mythbusters844
Changed wording

[jefferyharrell]

Are you happy to know that 1.0 will be spending more time in the bugfixing cycle than any update has before?

No. "The bug fixing cycle" is a myth, as far as I can tell. Every release has been buggier than the one that preceded it; 0.90 is the buggiest, most unstable, least playable release of KSP I've ever seen, and I started playing version 0.13.

How many bugs have been fixed during the beta? Spoiler alert: Zero. Exactly zero.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

No. "The bug fixing cycle" is a myth, as far as I can tell. Every release has been buggier than the one that preceded it; 0.90 is the buggiest, most unstable, least playable release of KSP I've ever seen, and I started playing version 0.13.

How many bugs have been fixed during the beta? Spoiler alert: Zero. Exactly zero.

Wasn't 0.20 supposed to be a bug-fix update?

What? They didn't do any bug fix updates that we are aware of.

Makes sense.

[CaelumEtAstra]

The new forum joke was like Melvin from Tremors. Always pulling bad jokes that nearly get him killed.

In short squad came this >< close to losing a faithful community.

[mattinoz]

So, now that the cat is out of the bag on the early April fools joke, I'd like to provide a little context. I think to start I'll quote a reply I wrote to someone who messaged me about this.

After the first reactions came I realised that people actually thought it'd be possible that a company in the games industry would in fact do something along these lines, and that's a sad realisation. However, I understand that when the April 1st reference isn't immediately clear then of course this announcement becomes a ridiculous proposition. I do hope that most people realised that Squad would never do this sort of a thing, and that we support our community, and like I said in the private message I hope we can all look back at this, and realise that perhaps we can hit that donate button for our favorite mod or YouTube channel

In light of the easy confusion I've added a small print to the announcement post and removed it from the articles.

P.S.

We do plan to update the forums in the future, as we discussed in the devnotes a while ago. That's still very much a thing but of course we'd be looking to improve the community, rather than to destroy it.

P.P.S.

vent all you wish

So there was a sneaky repost 18mins after the original then to try and make the date clearer?

[Columbia]

You guys realize that this is a joke, right..? (Wait, can someone clarify me on this?)

[Columbia]

And guys.. It's not everyday that you see a company keeping the air from being too serious by having an April Fools joke, right?

[General Rarity]

It feels like every time Squad or a Squad affiliated person does anything, they get shot down by people thinking the worst. 0.90, 1.0, you name it.

It doesn't surprise me at all that these people are usually ranting in a thread when a major change 'occurs' Every. Single. Time. I see the same people complaining about how 'bad' procedural parts are, for example, and telling the world about it in their signature.

The joke was a bit early, yes, but in the end:

... No one lost money. No one was injured, no one lost any property. No one had personal private information divulged. The only thing that got hurt was your pride and ego. Sorry, that's not getting hurt.

[Sandworm]

Bad joke Squad. Bad.

The truth is that a great many companies really do pull this sort of thing. You are not above suspicion in that regard. My first reaction at loosing access to old threads was that this was part of a 1.0 launch plan. Specifically, I thought that you were trying to remove old forum posts from google searches, building a 'fresh start' for 1.0. The money angle also plays into discussions around the internet that certain people are looking to wind down KSP and walk away shortly after 1.0. That sort of thing happens with indi games.

April fools is a week away. Btw, I've been sniffing KSP and found unusual traffic heading to 23.45.42.121 and 23.50.66.76. I've got some nifty screenshots showing that KSP is generating considerable upstream traffic to those IPs. Perhaps someone on reddit might know who lives at those locations?

Edited March 21, 2015 by Sandworm

[Columbia]

Wow, guys. Wow. Calm down, Squad was just trying to have a fun spirit with the community, but it's now turned into a big flamewar against Squad.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think you guys are too intolerant of Squad. Sure, it might not be funny for you, but at least appreciate that Squad isn't doing this in the first place. Gawd, I can't believe you guys are taking this joke as if they just linked you to a horror image.

And yes, I'm defending Squad on this one.

(Boards Soyuz Escape Pod and ejects from ISS (Gravity Reference!))

Edited March 21, 2015 by Columbia

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Wow, guys. Wow. Calm down, Squad was just trying to have a fun spirit with the community, but it's now turned into a big flamewar against Squad.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think you guys are too intolerant of Squad. Sure, it might not be funny for you, but at least appreciate that Squad isn't doing this in the first place. Gawd, I can't believe you guys are taking this joke as if they just linked you to a horror image.

And yes, I'm defending Squad on this one.

Thing is though - most actually believed it until Kasper said it was a joke

That's like EA saying they are releasing DLC, so every 30 magazines you go through you have to pay $5.00.

[Vanamonde]

So there was a sneaky repost 18mins after the original then to try and make the date clearer?

It's not exactly "sneaky" if he tells you he did it.

[RainDreamer]

I thought the language was satirical enough.

Especially this:

• We're integrating Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, pInterest, Spotify, Vine and dozens of other websites right into the forum. Tweet your post directly to us and have it published, or automatically share all your forum posts on your favourite social media website. A side effect of the integration with Twitter is that all posts will be limited to 140 characters. We've heavily debated and tested the pros and cons of this, and we've found that ultimately the short posts improve communication efficiency drastically.
  

And this:

• Follow your friends and have your friends follow you! Gone are the days of the classic forum front page, which will be replaced with an interactive display of you and your friends’ recent posts, profile changes, IRC messages, YouTube videos and much much more.
  

Also this:

• We will tag your age, gender and location onto your posts, and introduce a feature to match you with other KSP players in your region to make it easier to get into contact with other fans in real life!
  

Like, you know, all satirical commentary of the internet and social media? Do people really think they are turning the KSP forum to Kerbal Social Platform (KSP!) with a mash up of online dating at the same time?

[Kartoffelkuchen]

Haha, I had to think a moment before I saw the note "April Fools" on the bottom of the thread.

I think it was ok, but whoever made that idea should have thought about the reaction of the Community a bit more, as you can see now. :S Something like "in 1.0, you'll also be able to call the Kraken to sacrifice Kerbals you don't need" or so. The reaction would probably a bit more positive...

But hey, everyone does mistakes!