Having fun and being critical

[Curveball Anders]

I'm having fun with 1.0 and posting.

Mainly because I can post while at the office but I can't play (since I do like my work and don't want to be fired).

So I read and post during my workday and the I play (and ignores the forums) once I get home

[Ippo]

«this still needs work, but after 4 long years damn me if I am not proud of saying it is done»

I'd just like to object this statement. A work is done when it's done, not after a reasonably long time.

[Johnny Wishbone]

+rep

Considering how much they put into this update in a relatively small time span...

For me, that's the biggest issue with this release. Instead of polishing up what they already had and making it shine, they shoehorned and crammed in a bunch of stuff that completely changed the game. The game I've played for the last year and fell in love with, and the game I got as the "official release" are not the same game. That's a problem for me.

This is my opinion; I know it's probably not popular, but in no way does it represent someone whining or hating. I am allowed to say what I feel and you are allowed to disagree or agree with that. That doesn't make either of us wrong or right.

First, if this release is what Squad intended to be the "official release" that is "feature complete", then things like the new aero model and re-entry heating SHOULD have been part of previous releases. At the very least, they should have been part of the beta. To dump these totally new game mechanics on the "official release" is very short sighted, especially after how many years of development and previous releases of this game? We had threads in this forum for the last month telling us how much these new game mechanics changed things and how we were going to have to "un-learn everything you've already learned." Why such a drastic change at such a late point in the development cycle? It has completely changed the game (ignoring whether it is for better or worse) and done so at the 11th hour. Design decisions like that are insane and are definitely going to provoke an emotional response from a community as passionate as this one.

Second, there are a LOT of bugs and issues with this release. Some can be overcome by changing your gameplay style, and some are just flat out broken. And I'm not including things like the tech tree, which is a hot mess of failure in my opinion. I'm talking about actual bugs in the code and errors in the game. Fixing these things should have been part of this development cycle, not spending time on introducing new game mechanics.

I admit that I was pretty active in the forums the day 1.0 was released, and I admit that was pretty critical of this release at that time. I stand by what I said then and what I say now, and I do not consider any of it to be whining or hating. I absolutely LOVE this game. I don't like how this release was handled and I don't like some of the changes that have been made. And I should be allowed to express that without being labeled a "whiner and hater."

[Musil]

I paid for the right to be critical.

No. You can't buy the right to be critical: it is inalienable and you always had it. You don't need to read Ulysses to criticize Joyce's writing, actually, and a lot of people make the mistake of thinking you have to know, own or have done what you are criticizing. You don't.

But having the right to do something doesn't mean you can do it without looking like an ass.

I have been critical too, you know...? I think not having a way to dissipate heat is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Sure. But calling a bunch of people idiots â€â€or presumably something worst, if you had your way because you disagree with them about the completely subjective mater of aesthetic preferences about mouse pointers, well... that makes you look like an ass, in mi eyes. And I am sorry to say so, but, as you point out, I have te right to criticize.

And later you say, paraphrasing, "this is the internet so you have to be rude to be heard". Dude! That's like justifying assholery because "it's the only way to get things done around here". It is not. You don't need to be a pushover, you don't have to say you like what you don't, and you should certainly have your say, but there is really no need to be rude to the team that has produced this wonderful game and to the QA testers that worked to make your game better for free! Did they make mistakes? Probably, who wouldn't? Do they deserve to be called idiots by some random internet guy just because he paid 15$ and thinks he's entitled to go around spreading insults? Probably not. Make no mistake: you are entitled to be as rude as you like. It's just... why would you?

As a consumer, if the product you bought is sub par, you should be angry, you should protest. But, first of all, KSP is not sub par â€â€it has some things that could be better, it is not mediocre productâ€â€, and secondly... I am guessing you didn't buy it on release at 1.0; so you bought an early access game, you bought a beta, with the explicit warning that the game would change and not necessarily in a way you would like. So you bought unfinished software, still in the works, and later you are insulting the developers because they made the â€â€in your mid wrong choice about mouse pointers.

Well, you look like an ass doing so, in mi opinion. And I am sorry to say so, because we share an interest in KSP that should make us colleagues and friends. In that spirit, I really do not wish to offend you, and I am very sorry if you feel attacked. It is not my intention, and I wish you don't take it personally... The problem is, since I am being rude, you probably will feel ofended despite my best intentions, and you will probably want to insult me back.

Then again... It's the internet, what did I expect.

- - - Updated - - -

No, no, that is definitely not why. If we just take the recent AMA on Reddit, the reason the dV readouts didn't make it, is because they are a part of a bigger system that they're implementing. A system that involves scientists and engineers to have more skills. They didn't put dV readouts in the game, because the experience system with your crew that allows for this isn't ready for release yet.

I think Squad were brave not to put it in - Now that I know it's a part of a bigger and different picture than I thought, I'd rather they wait until it's done. Besides, all I had to do was download KER, which was updated like 1 hour after release.

Jolly... I was just thinking the XP system should have something like that, and it's a shame it doesn't. ¡Yey! Can't wait for 1.1

But yeah, KER is awesome.

[tater]

My first post here last August(?) was comments by a new player, and given the beta nature of the game, they were constructive, but certainly unflinching. My posts WRT 1.0 are no different. 1.0 was bound to---arbitrarily because of the version number---engender harsher criticism. My biggest criticisms have always been levels at career, since I have though since I started it was not well thought out. I'm not talking about special cases of "hard" (those difficulty sliders are just grind sliders, nothing makes the actual game harder), but joust normal play. The paradigm of KSP career is that it is hardest at the beginning, and in many ways that cannot be changed, but I do think that science/career/tech deserves a fresh look, with nothing as sacrosanct.

[Kerbart]

Attaboy critique is pointless. Bugs wouldn't be fixed without the feedback that there are bugs.

Overly critical? 1.0, let me repeat that: ONE POINT OH. There's no reason Squad had to go to 1.0 before the end of April. Well, apparently there was, but they're not sharing with us that there was a reason in the first place, let alone what that reason was.

When you're an early release game and "on the market" for many years, the 1.0 version is setting expectations. Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love the new features. But if you're going to release a "gold" version, your community who has dealt with "it's only beta LOLZ" for a long time will have certain expectations regarding bugs.

“But it's impossible to have no bugs in something like this.â€Â

Absolutely. I agree. Does that make the average forum member here an whining entitled generation-xer? No. It's fine to have a bug like when doing a retrograde orbit above 500km and having three drills mounted on your space station, Valentine will turn into Jeb when EVA'ing. Yeah ok, who knew?

But we're talking about when I play the game for the first time I run into half a dozen show-stopping bugs without doing anything special. On a “gold†version. Really?

The QA team seems to take critisism of the how did that make it through QA kind very personal. And rightly so, since apparently they reported these bugs and not enough was done about them. So the blame's on Squad who for some reason had an immutable deadline, not on them. And in this case not “Squad†as a team, they did an awesome job with the release, even fixing bugs that were found on Sunday Twitch Streams before the game was released on Monday. But somewhere, someone, made a decision that the 1.0 release had to go out on that particular date, bugs be damned.

You can't blame the community for being upset over finding an amazing amount of stupid bugs in the game. Yes, there are reasons for it. Maybe even valid reasons. But that doesn't make it any less disappointing.

[KatzOhki]

Maybe it helps that I took months off the game before playing when 1.0 released. (Got frustrated when asteroids came out due to a weird physics glitch).

Built a plane last night. First time I have EVER built a well functioning plane that works exactly as expected on the first try. For me, the Aero lives up to expectations: it works as I expected it to.

[Scrogdog]

I think people are getting a little worked up over semantics. As in what 1.0 means.

I keep it rather simple. I came on board around .17. My cost to value ratio on this game is off the freaking charts. I almost feel guilty that I paid so little money for a game that has given me so much.

Almost.

I've played them all. BARIS, Virgin Shuttle, Microsoft Sim, Orbiter; name it. There is no other like KSP.

I suppose it would be one thing if I came on board when I did and didn't see what I expected. But I did. I signed up for 'in development' and that's what I got.

1.0 was a marketing decision. Semantics.

If they never did one more thing to this game, I would still play for the rest of my life.

So, I'll be happy to critique anything I want. But what do I gain by doing so in a huff or with anger?

Uh... re-entry needs some work, eh friends?

[Robotengineer]

OP, have you been around longer than your join date? Because the whining isn't anything new, it happens every update. It may be a bit stronger this update because it is the release, but it happens all the time. This forum is nice and easy going until an update, a major change to something, or a bad joke, then it get's very defensive and/or aggressive. When Squad partnered with Curse as the official mod hosting site, forum people cried bloody murder. When KasperVld posted the April fools joke two weeks before April fools day, people freaked out. When potato chip fairings were seen, people freaked out again. This forum likes to blow things out of proportion. So you can criticize the critics, but don't expect it to have that much of an impact.

[Casei]

What's amusing is that I swore I would play my .23.5 game "until 1.0 came out", which means my real gripe is pretty late.

This is my first real encounter with the Contract System.

HATE IT.

I liked how KSP (in my .23.5 game) was Explore For The Science or the sheer joy of exploration, not playing lackey to some corporation that just wants me to alter my designs in unrealistic ways (deploy parachute at Unreasonable Expectation of Altitude, anyone?). My career is named the OOPS program because we aren't terribly careful about shooting our little Kerbal Poets into space (even though we had only 4 deaths in the 5 year program!). Money gets in the way of To Boldly Go, so going back to Science Career, thanks!

[Spartwo]

I grumbled about the Ram intakes but I'm over that already, it was just the annoyance of rebuilding all RP ships. Beyond that either hooray or I just won't use it very much. Ok, moan a little but there are very few things worth pursuing a change in in any way and most of them will likely be remedied in 1.0.1. There haven't even been post-update fixes yet.

[KAP1985]

personally, I have seen more people complaining about these kind of things, then I have seen them happening

[r_rolo1]

OP, have you been around longer than your join date? Because the whining isn't anything new, it happens every update. It may be a bit stronger this update because it is the release, but it happens all the time. This forum is nice and easy going until an update, a major change to something, or a bad joke, then it get's very defensive and/or aggressive. When Squad partnered with Curse as the official mod hosting site, forum people cried bloody murder. When KasperVld posted the April fools joke two weeks before April fools day, people freaked out. When potato chip fairings were seen, people freaked out again. This forum likes to blow things out of proportion. So you can criticize the critics, but don't expect it to have that much of an impact.

To be fair, that is actually a relatively new phenomenon. You didn't saw this kind of hostility in say, 0.14, that was a far worse bump ( SQUAD had to make 3 quick bugfixes in a row to that one ), but then again in those days SQUAD didn't informed the forums about game changes via Orbiter forums and there was a clear sense that the devs heard people suggestions, that , for some reason or another, was lost somewhere in between ( if I had to put the finger in it, I would say that was around the time SQUAD launched the science mode or somewhere around that time ... oh and, BTW, I haven't said that the devs don't hear us ( I still have to thanks Harv for hearing my suggestion about fuel cells ), I said that the general perception is not that one ).

Add that to the heightened expectations people had about getting out of Alpha/Beta status ( that, numbering apart, is a sign that the company believes the game is good enough ) and you would surely have some sterner criticism than for a admittedly "in works" version. If the game had no glaring bugs , probably that would had subsided for now, but the game ATM unfortunately has a couple of very visible bugs ( like the obvious first reentry ship you will most likely use being aerodynamically unstable with the heatshield in the direction it should be in or engines that are supposed to burn continuously for a long time to explode in 7 min of operation or cubic struts killing drag on 3,5 m parts ... ) and some questionable design and UI features, so there has to be some people saying they are not happy with the game as it is today.

And on the OP, let me be honest. If I complain about a game is because I care about the game enough to think losing time griping about it is a valuable action ( say, if I don't care about AC:Unity you'll not hear me gripping about the graph glitches in day 0 release, because ... I don't care ). Assuming that you also care about the game, the only difference between you and the people that are complaining is simply the fact they are complaining about stuff they feel is not right as it is now. If you don't feel the game deserves criticism, I'm OK with that . If you don't feel that complaining about the game is worthy use of your time, well, I'm OK with that. But you have also to be OK with the fact that people might want to complain, otherwise you're just saying "I'm right and you're wrong, so stop yammering" , a attitude that is not exactly conciliatory

[Musil]

And on the OP, let me be honest. If I complain about a game is because I care about the game enough to think losing time griping about it is a valuable action ( say, if I don't care about AC:Unity you'll not hear me gripping about the graph glitches in day 0 release, because ... I don't care ). Assuming that you also care about the game, the only difference between you and the people that are complaining is simply the fact they are complaining about stuff they feel is not right as it is now. If you don't feel the game deserves criticism, I'm OK with that . If you don't feel that complaining about the game is worthy use of your time, well, I'm OK with that. But you have also to be OK with the fact that people might want to complain, otherwise you're just saying "I'm right and you're wrong, so stop yammering" , a attitude that is not exactly conciliatory

On the contrary, I fully agree that the problems you point out are indeed problems and need to be addressed ASAP. And there are proper ways to tell the devs what they are and urge them to fix them.

My problem is not with criticism; quite the oposite. My problem is with the negative attitude that we are getting from people when they find some aspect of the game is not exactly as they expected it and they start on a rampage, calling everyone an idiot and the game a piece of crap, just because x-feature is not perfect.

I find that the strong community is an important aspect of the game. When I first started playing, there was a lot of thing I did not understand, and people helped me out; the moders do an incredible job and, in general, it's just fun talking about kerbal stuff. Unlike most places on the internet, people here are quite civilized and nice. But no one likes a kid with a tantrum, and since 1.0 I have seen to many tantrums on here to be happy about it.

- - - Updated - - -

OP, have you been around longer than your join date? Because the whining isn't anything new, it happens every update. It may be a bit stronger this update because it is the release, but it happens all the time. This forum is nice and easy going until an update, a major change to something, or a bad joke, then it get's very defensive and/or aggressive. When Squad partnered with Curse as the official mod hosting site, forum people cried bloody murder. When KasperVld posted the April fools joke two weeks before April fools day, people freaked out. When potato chip fairings were seen, people freaked out again. This forum likes to blow things out of proportion. So you can criticize the critics, but don't expect it to have that much of an impact.

Yeah, I joined when 0.90 came out, but had the game since 0.24 was out. I remember some bickering about 0.25 and 0.90, but nothing like this. Anyhow, yes, blown out of proportion and doomed to go away on it's own, but will you not think of the children, why does no one think of the children?

- - - Updated - - -

What's amusing is that I swore I would play my .23.5 game "until 1.0 came out", which means my real gripe is pretty late.

This is my first real encounter with the Contract System.

HATE IT.

I liked how KSP (in my .23.5 game) was Explore For The Science or the sheer joy of exploration, not playing lackey to some corporation that just wants me to alter my designs in unrealistic ways (deploy parachute at Unreasonable Expectation of Altitude, anyone?). My career is named the OOPS program because we aren't terribly careful about shooting our little Kerbal Poets into space (even though we had only 4 deaths in the 5 year program!). Money gets in the way of To Boldly Go, so going back to Science Career, thanks!

So, you don't like career? Easy solution: don't play it. There, fixed. No need to be bitter about it.

[r_rolo1]

Ok, it seems that I passed out as too negative myself

TBH, what I have to say is that this is a recurrent phenomenon on online communities centered about a game, especially a game that is open to the public in it's alpha stage. People get into the community with some expectations about the game and sooner or later the devs go in another direction than that person wanted to . So those persons get increasingly bitter with time ,especially when release date/ final patch of the game gets out ( because that means that the devs are increasingly committing to go in a direction that is not exactly what that person wanted ). OTOH the people that are happy with all the stuff the game has get also increasingly defensive about what they feel to be unwarranted attacks on a game they think it is fine ... and both this actions lead to a escalation to both fanboying and primma donna bickering about every minor defect. This is even worse in game like this one, when it was never really clear what was the end goal of the completed game.

This is largely predictable ( especially for someone that has already passed by a cycle or two of this ) , not easily avoidable. And again, making threads about how negative the community is being is not the way to go. People that being negative about the game have their reasons to be negative, and some of them will actually be right on their judgement ( maybe not on the size of the reaction, but that is another issue ) ... and those people will understand this kind of threads as barely disguised fanboying and attempts to shut them up ( like I said in my previous post ). The only real way of dealing with this is simply to really eat your pride ( in both sides ) and try to talk in a civil way about what the complaining parts think it is wrong point by point. If there is still common ground enough, a solution will be achieved ... if not those people will eventually go to other game or to mod to their hearts contents and there was nothing you could do about it anyway.

Disclaimer : All of the above is taken from my experience as a moderator in a certain game forums and for a long time fan of that particular series ( not anymore because the main dev has stated clearly that I'm not one of their target costumers and that they prefer people more stupid than me as costumers ). Take it with as many salt you want

Edited April 30, 2015 by r_rolo1

[Musil]

Ok, it seems that I passed out as too negative myself

Not at all, your comment was quite all right. Critical, yes, but that's a good thing

[Casei]

So, you don't like career? Easy solution: don't play it. There, fixed. No need to be bitter about it.

So, you mean I should do the very thing that I said I was going to do in the post you quoted from me? Brilliant, man, brilliant. Great job.

[Musil]

So, you mean I should do the very thing that I said I was going to do in the post you quoted from me? Brilliant, man, brilliant. Great job.

You were complaining about not liking it! It's like complaining that you don't like chocolate an saying «so I wont eat it». Yes, that's the answer, don't eat it. Don't complain either.

[TK421d]

to be fair, a good indicator of dev progress is how critical your forums are.

when things are good, everything is mellow and progress/discussion is all about theoretical or mod issues.

when a patch is new, its all 'omg when is mod X being updated??? i cant play!!!'

when a patch is problematic, you get gripes, much more than normal because players are spending more time posting than playing. i fit into this category.

the untested aero being a part of something as monumental as a 1.0 is just mind-boggling to me.

but i'm going to stop here before i get negative.

[Aerindel]

I really do not wish to offend you, and I am very sorry if you feel attacked. It is not my intention, and I wish you don't take it personally... The problem is, since I am being rude, you probably will feel ofended despite my best intentions, and you will probably want to insult me back.

Not at all, like I said, its the internet, anything said here has about 100% less emotional impact than a real human interaction so don't worry about it. In order to get "I don't like you" emotionally you pretty much have to threaten to kill someones children. Calling someone an "idiot" online is equivalent to saying "Hey dude, it would be cool if you did it this way instead" In a real interaction.

And anyway, I agree with most of what your saying. The whole thing about the right to criticize, I completely agree that its an inalienable right, but a lot of people on the internet are fascists/authoritarians and don't believe in such things so I've found its easier to just say "I paid for it" to deal with all the people trying shut down criticism.

The other thing that makes this hard is that there is a huge range of player skill in Kerbal. A lot of what people are complaining about are things that they just aren't good at and that is really muddying the waters. The legitimate problems are being buried under people who are just temporarily confused and the people who aren't confused lumping all criticism into "get guud" type sentiment.

This is why if you believe that there are just a handful of serious gameplay problems you need to hammer at them to get heard.

[Musil]

Not at all, like I said, its the internet, anything said here has about 100% less emotional impact than a real human interaction so don't worry about it. In order to get "I don't like you" emotionally you pretty much have to threaten to kill someones children. Calling someone an "idiot" online is equivalent to saying "Hey dude, it would be cool if you did it this way instead" In a real interaction.

I am not sure that's a good thing

But yeah, a lot of what I was saying has to do with people complaining about the game suddenly requiring new skills and different (good or bad) game mechanics. That annoys me, to be honest.

Acknowledging there are problems with the game is part of the process. But I believe there is a right way to say it. If I may say so, now you sound very reasonable, but your first post was so... idk, obnoxious, it killed my enjoyment of the community. And, as I said on another post, the community is an important part of this game, for me.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Musil

[Casei]

You were complaining about not liking it! It's like complaining that you don't like chocolate an saying «so I wont eat it». Yes, that's the answer, don't eat it. Don't complain either.

No, it's not like that at all. If I came to a KSP forum and posted in a KSP thread about me not liking chocolate, then the opinion would be irrelevant and best sat through in silence and a STFU reaction would have been perfectly warranted. However, this is a KSP forum, my opinion just happened to be on KSP, and said post was completely on-topic. Totally relevant, and I don't have to sit in silence so long as I am not derogatory toward anyone.

What you have misconstrued as a complaint is actually what is called an amusing anecdote. What I presented was an amusing side-note to the "having fun and being critical" OP that my only "complaint" comes from a previous version and not 1.0. There's nothing bitter about it, except whatever bitterness you read into it. Personally, I thought the situation was funny, which is what the word "amusing" from my original post means, as well as that little smiley face at the end of it. I thought others would find the concept amusing, as well. If the joke confused and angered you, Dear Reader, you have my sincerest apologies for your not having got said joke. If the joke has excessively harmed you by causing grievous confusion and mental distress, seek immediate medical attention and take it up with my attorneys.

You do realize you're complaining about someone having a (perceived) complaint, right? Would it be okay to tell you that you must suffer through any objection you may have to my posts in silence? Yeah, I didn't think so.

[Musil]

@Casei.

OK, sorry if I misconstrued your comment.

[Aerindel]

Acknowledging there are problems with the game is part of the process. But I believe there is a right way to say it. If I may say so, now you sound very reasonable, but your first post was so... idk, obnoxious, it killed my enjoyment of the community. And, as I said on another post, the community is an important part of this game, for me.

Well, I'm still trying to get a feel for things. To be honest, I wasn't really interested in the community at the time. I've been on the forum for a year but 90% of my total posts I've made in the past two days. The various criticism i've sprinkled around is an effort to make sure someone at Squad gets the message that 1.0 isn't all it was cracked up to be, and that, no, its not just bugs or people who aren't very good at flying rockets but that there where some genuinely stupid decisions made that need to be unmade. In essence, I was doing my part to incite riot, to change the zeitgeist of 1.0 from hype train to train wreck so that someone who could do something about it would pay attention.

Of course, now that I'm starting to interact with people here I'm getting sucked in, which I was trying to avoid since this community with all the modders and such is crazily complicated and large compared to the forums I normally spend time on. I've already lost literally many hundreds of hours playing kerbal, if I spend as much time on this forum as I do on the smaller less active ones I normally hang out on I will never get anything done at all.

[Xavven]

Not at all, like I said, its the internet, anything said here has about 100% less emotional impact than a real human interaction so don't worry about it. In order to get "I don't like you" emotionally you pretty much have to threaten to kill someones children. Calling someone an "idiot" online is equivalent to saying "Hey dude, it would be cool if you did it this way instead" In a real interaction.

Yikes, I hope you don't bring that same sentiment to email. In my organization, people have literally gotten fired over poor written interpersonal skills. I'm not saying a forum is the same as a job, just that I disagree with you. I find that the personal attacks, like calling someone an idiot, actually distracts from the point the author is trying to make, and does not actually punctuate it.