A Reminder to the Community

[DoToH]

This isn't true. This is much more constructive than, "Aero is unplayable," or "Do you like hot dog airplanes?!"

False. OP is friendly, positive, nice, but not constructive. In fact, "aero is unplayable" gives much more information about suggested game development than saying nothing at all about gameplay.

[nightingale]

I'm amazed how much negative reaction this is getting.

I for one agree with UpsilonAerospace - it's time to chill out a bit with the negativity!

[BagelRabbit]

Hello!

To address a few of the points made on this thread, I'm making this early-morning post. It may not even make as much sense as my previous one, because I'm still very tired... but hopefully it will clarify some things.

~~~

First of all, I changed the title.

I didn't intend for the thread to be passive-aggressive. I genuinely wanted to offer my own perspective on this issue in a more-or-less fair way. Sorry if it seemed otherwise.

To clarify the matter, I've taken out the word 'Friendly.' The thread now just reads 'A Reminder to the Community,' which sounds a little harsher to me, but hopefully it doesn't stir up as many hard feelings.

~~~

Second of all, some people have critiqued my points.

This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do! Of course, I'm not always right. However, I do feel the need to further explain some of my points. I'll use quotes from Cpt. Kipard for this, as he brought up some genuinely good points.

1. Is this just a long-winded way of saying "the past is the past"? When has that ever been a convincing argument? The moment you do anything it's already in the past. So what?

There are some things that have already been done, but that can still be changed. There are others that are set in stone.

As per always, I'll give the recent 'Save the Round-8!' movement as an example. The Round-8 toroidal tank had already been converted to a xenon tank by the Devs. However, this decision was definitely reversible: SQUAD could add a separate xenon tank before 1.0 was released. They ended up doing so, causing joy amongst the members of the Forum.

However, the release of 1.0 was a different story. It seems as if many members believed that 1.0 should have been delayed or be depicted as another beta version. While this is a reasonable thing to say, it simply is impossible at this point: the release of 1.0 is something that happened in the past, and SQUAD cannot undo it. If someone is posting about how more beta versions were needed or the like, it's really too late for that. This is what I'm referring to on the Original Post.

2. This whole point is a bit of a strawman and a red herring. I can't honestly believe you think anyone in this community ACTUALLY BELIEVES SQUAD ARE SABOTAGING THEIR OWN PRODUCT. Come on... As for Squad doing what's best for KSP, well it's not that simple. Squad are a capitalist organisation (otherwise known as a business) and as such they are doing what they think is best for Squad, not KSP. KSP being good or bad is just a vehicle for that, as is our enjoyment of the "finished" product. Which brings us back to point 1.

As much as you can't believe this, I've seen posts that seem to suggest it, whether in jest or not. (I think that referencing some questionable posts on my OP would have been great, but I didn't want to highlight specific community members as scapegoats. That's not nice.)

As for SQUAD being a business and trying to support what they think is best for it itself, I have no trouble believing that. However, I do have trouble believing that SQUAD is doing much else than KSP right now. All of the SQUAD team have been reporting working long hours, working on bugs, and the like. As for the official SQUAD website, it's bare-bones and hasn't been updated in years. In other words, SQUAD and KSP are incredibly closely linked.

I wonder, then, what difference there is from SQUAD doing the best with KSP and SQUAD doing the best for itself. There doesn't seem to be much difference there, honestly. Maybe SQUAD wants to make more profit or sell more copies, but it seems to have done a good job of making this process fairly, not releasing half-baked concoctions or the like (until, arguably, now... which is the cause of all of this criticism!). And that's actually exactly what I said on my post.

~~~

As for the overall backlash about this thread being a complaining thread and being useless:

I hope that at least one person reads this thread and says something along the lines of, "Hey! I really shouldn't be making nasty posts in SQUAD's direction or in anyone's direction, really." If that happens, this thread has served its purpose.

This isn't a complaining thread, or at least it wasn't supposed to be. Instead, it was supposed to be a thread that did its best to reduce some of the complaining that is happening on the Forum right now. If it's anything other than that, I'm honestly sorry. (At least it has nice formatting!)

If you don't see it that way, that's fine. But complaining about the "complaint" about the complainers is not only confusing, but it also hardly does any good...

-Upsilon

[Wiseman]

False. OP is friendly, positive, nice, but not constructive. In fact, "aero is unplayable" gives much more information about suggested game development than saying nothing at all about gameplay.

False. "Aero is broken SQUAD fix" is not actually something that contains any valuable feedback - what could a developer take from that, other than the poster is angry? "My capsule/plane does X when it seems it should do Y", "An informational overlay for the VAB/SPH would be helpful in designing aerodynamic vehicles", or "I found a bug - when I do X, Y happens, and here are my reproduction steps" would be useful. What the OP is discussing is the flat negativity that seems to be popping up a lot in threads this last week, which aren't actually helpful and are bad for the community.

[Deddly]

I feel like this could almost be merged into the Positive Forum Movement thread

[DrD]

All I can say is, enjoy that period of your life when the perceived shortcomings of a computer game are a big issue and/or problem for you. Soon enough you will have far greater things to worry about.

[jwenting]

All the negativity and hostility in the forums towards Squad, as pointed out by OP quite succinctly, is a very big reason so many game developers (and indeed companies in general) don't have community forums, and if they do have strict policies about staff not taking part in them, not reading them, and whatever you do never listen to the community.

It's too demoralising for the employees to have to deal with the constant attacks, complaints, whining, even treats to life and limb (yes, I've seen it) that are the norm in internet communities.

And it seems that the KSP "community", which more or less seemed immune from that, has now at last stooped down to the level of the "communities" of games like World of Warcraft and Wold of Tanks, or is fast on its way there.

Maybe its an inevitable consequence of success on the internet that you start attracting such irate, obnoxious, toxic, personalities in ever greater numbers as you gain popularity. But it's not something I like, and any "community" that reaches such lows is one that I tend to quickly abandon.

Best thing SQUAD can do is to rapidly and consistently close and delete all the irate, complaint and rubbish filled threads and ban those who start them.

[tjoreilly]

I fondly remember when every update was received as if it were a gift on Christmas morning. Sometimes the Patcher wouldn't work and you would see posts like, "Hey, the Patcher's not working for OSX, any idea what's wrong?" However, that was about as heated as things got. When did all of this "Squad, you're doing it wrong" stuff start.

[Bill Phil]

False. OP is friendly, positive, nice, but not constructive. In fact, "aero is unplayable" gives much more information about suggested game development than saying nothing at all about gameplay.

It's constructive criticism of the people complaining. Much better than just saying "Aero is unplayable" since that offers nothing as to how.

[Lord Aurelius]

I agree with the premise of the original post, the past has already happened, and plenty has already been said on the topic (i.e. I'm pretty sure the devs got the message). Additional hostility is not likely to accomplish much at this point (disclaimer: I was NOT happy with how 1.0 turned out and some of my earlier posts were rather negative).

One additional suggestion I would like to make is that if you're still riled up about some of the issues with 1.0, direct that energy in a constructive way by participating in a suggestion/discussion thread to generate constructive ideas on how to improve the game going forwards (it's okay to be frustrated with some of the things in 1.0, I know I still am) so take a moment to clearly state what you're frustrated with in a civil, constructive manner and give some suggestions on what could be done to improve it.

Alternatively, if you're into modding, find a mod that's trying to address one of the shortcomings of the game and offer to help out, or even start your own mod if you have the propensity for it.

Lastly, if you really need to, take a break from the game. Things will improve as Squad irons out the rough edges and modders do their thing, so if you come back in a bit you may very well find that the issues that caused so much frustration have been fixed.

[Tw1]

Hello!

To address a few of the points made on this thread, I'm making this early-morning post. It may not even make as much sense as my previous one, because I'm still very tired... but hopefully it will clarify some things.

-Upsilon

Tis an excellent response good sir.

Something I've noticed lately- people need to be careful, and think about what the other person really meant before posting. This is not so much about what's going on in this thread, just the forum in general.

All the negativity and hostility in the forums towards Squad, as pointed out by OP quite succinctly, is a very big reason so many game developers (and indeed companies in general) don't have community forums, and if they do have strict policies about staff not taking part in them, not reading them, and whatever you do never listen to the community.

Indeed. We must never become this. Even though I very much disagree with some choices they have made, and will offer my critique, they're still making a very awesome game.

Also, let's keep making great stuff in the fanworks section to offset the bad stuff.

I fondly remember when every update was received as if it were a gift on Christmas morning. Sometimes the Patcher wouldn't work and you would see posts like, "Hey, the Patcher's not working for OSX, any idea what's wrong?" However, that was about as heated as things got. When did all of this "Squad, you're doing it wrong" stuff start.

I remember it well.

For me, that sort of petered out when the grindy-pointscorey nature of career mode became apparent.(I still don't really like that, and think it's a good scapegoat to blame the change in the forum character on.) (Still holding out for budget mode, and some proper surface exploration).

Firing up a new version is always exciting, but the way releases are so super hyped now just sets things up for disappointment.

[Aerindel]

I remember it well.

For me, that sort of petered out when the grindy-pointscorey nature of career mode became apparent.(I still don't really like that, and think it's a good scapegoat to blame the change in the forum character on.) (Still holding out for budget mode, and some proper surface exploration).

Firing up a new version is always exciting, but the way releases are so super hyped now just sets things up for disappointment.

This! this should be the universal answer when people ask why things have changed.

[KAP1985]

All the negativity and hostility in the forums towards Squad, as pointed out by OP quite succinctly, is a very big reason so many game developers (and indeed companies in general) don't have community forums, and if they do have strict policies about staff not taking part in them, not reading them, and whatever you do never listen to the community.

It's too demoralising for the employees to have to deal with the constant attacks, complaints, whining, even treats to life and limb (yes, I've seen it) that are the norm in internet communities.

And it seems that the KSP "community", which more or less seemed immune from that, has now at last stooped down to the level of the "communities" of games like World of Warcraft and Wold of Tanks, or is fast on its way there.

Maybe its an inevitable consequence of success on the internet that you start attracting such irate, obnoxious, toxic, personalities in ever greater numbers as you gain popularity. But it's not something I like, and any "community" that reaches such lows is one that I tend to quickly abandon.

Best thing SQUAD can do is to rapidly and consistently close and delete all the irate, complaint and rubbish filled threads and ban those who start them.

knowing how your customers think/feel about your product should be a company's #1 concern

it's anti-consumer to just ignore your customers becuase you donmt like that they arn't completely polite all the time

[jwenting]

knowing how your customers think/feel about your product should be a company's #1 concern

it's anti-consumer to just ignore your customers becuase you donmt like that they arn't completely polite all the time

Many "communities" are so toxic that no useful data about customer sentiment can be gained from them. They're made useless by a few induhviduals who flood the place with their negativity and the usual trolls, griefers, and idiots who just parrot anything negative without giving it second thought.

If Blizzard had "listened to the community" in their forums, they'd have shut down WoW at least 6 years ago because they'd have been convinced that nobody likes it, that everyone is getting ready to cancel their subscriptions, that "WoW iz ded" which was (and probably still is) claimed several times a day for example.

Instead they create panels of users, people invited by whatever system (be it amount of time played, world ranking, who knows) and ask them in person, people who're actually playing the game a lot and are pretty decent at it.

They have people monitoring the forums, but it's not the developers. It's a special team of customer support people, who're no doubt given massive doses of tranquilisers and anti-depressants to stop them from banning half the users every day and then throwing themselves off the roof of Blizzard's corporate headquarters in frustration.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I fondly remember when every update was received as if it were a gift on Christmas morning. Sometimes the Patcher wouldn't work and you would see posts like, "Hey, the Patcher's not working for OSX, any idea what's wrong?" However, that was about as heated as things got. When did all of this "Squad, you're doing it wrong" stuff start.

Yes, but that was Alpha. I think people just got tired. The patcher still doesn't work in 1.0, full release, for really real this time. I had tons of patience towards SQUAD when we were in alpha, it's part of being in alpha. But time went on and for many people including me, things didn't get better. That's the bitterness you see on the forums.

Speaking of receiving updates as gifts, remember when 0.20 came out (or was it 21?) and people were complaining not-so-happily about the SAS? Guess what, still broken in 1.0. That's the sort of thing that I'm talking about. People just got tired.

[KAP1985]

just becuase some feel a comunity is "toxic" doesn't mean it is

some just can't take any criticism, I'm not denying that there are some trolling, but most complaints that I've seen were completely reasonable

Squad released 1.0 too early, and so it had bugs and issues

and that's why people complained, because 1.0 is supposed to be a finished product

[MacroNova]

I liked this reminder more when it was friendly.

[tjoreilly]

I love KSP. And I think that all of its developers, testers, modders, streamers, and forum moderators (both current and former) are wonderful people that we should thank every time we type a message either complimenting, criticizing, or affirming the current state of this unique, educational, and very re-playable game.

And 1.0.2 is great. Thanks to everyone that developed and inspired this update.

DEAL WITH THE LOVE!

[DoToH]

I love KSP. And I think that all of its developers, testers, modders, streamers, and forum moderators (both current and former) are wonderful people that we should thank

Me too.

But I don't think 1.0.2 is great. I think 1.0.1 was a mistake. There are more people who don't like it and posted explaining their point.

If you read complaining threads, you will find some rude "Deal with it", "whiner", "learn to play". And those aren't from the complaining people.

Just wanted to note that having manners is not equal to not being critic.

[Motokid600]

Let this be heard.

This community is a shining example of what video game communities need to be. Period. In my personal experience it is above all.

[Francois424]

I'd like to add... don't let haters get to you Squad. Yes there are things ppl aren't happy about, yes there are whiners and some pretty verbal ones at that. But if they didn't like your game and your patches up to that point, they would not be on the forums.

Ppl like different things, and when something you like gets nerfed, you tend to take it personally and whine about it. I have a few... irritants... that cropped in 1.0 which most likely would make me edit some engine parts and make my game "Non-Stock" anymore. I hate having to do that. But I love the game.

Again, don't let the whines get to you and give up. just keep at it. I am very much looking forward to more development and especially Unity5. Thank you for such a good game.

[Starwhip]

*salutes*

Hear, hear!

[NecroBones]

Dear Community,

My name is UpsilonAerospace.

I have only ever truly loved three or four games in my lifetime. KSP is one of them. I'm proud to be a member of the community here, too. For the most part, it's a great group, and I don't know if I'll ever find a better one.

Apparently I repped you too recently, otherwise I'd give you another point.

[CloudlessEchoes]

I agree with the OP. I started playing ksp maybe two weeks before 1.0. The community seemed great, and there were so many useful guides and mods. Then when I started reading 1.0 release info, I was surprised at the negativity. I couldn't believe that people who claimed to love a game so much would care what number the release was called. After all, you would be getting it and playing the exact same content either way, right? Then with the release the floodgates opened. Negative comments everywhere. Honestly most game forums are just completely toxic, but this one didn't seem to be, until 1.0. The entitlement of thinking the game should play exactly as you personally want it to won't get people what they want. It's going to play how the developers want it to, and they're going to listen to well reasoned, constructive arguments, not the hate fest that went on.

In the end I'm sure it is a loud minority just like it always is, but it doesn't leave a good impression.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

[...]before 1.0. The community seemed great, and there were so many useful guides and mods. [...]

[...]The entitlement of thinking the game should play exactly as you personally want it to won't get people what they want. It's going to play how the developers want it to, and they're going to listen to well reasoned, constructive arguments, not the hate fest that went on.

You got it all wrong. It all started loooong before 1.0, even long before 0.90, although 0.90 kicked a whole new wave of negativity. But more importantly here, if the developer's idea of how the game plays is the opposite of what the same developer said it was going to play, then... Entitlement? What entitlement? People expect what the DEVELOPER said was going to deliver 4 years ago (2 in my case).