How finished is KSP in your opinion?

[severedsolo]

People keep talking about "game-breaking bugs" but are surprisingly vague about what they are. Can I have some examples please (ones that are reproducable in stock only)?

I'm just curious, as although I run into bugs, I wouldn't call any of them "game breaking", and I couldn't ever say that they weren't caused by mods.

Edited August 30, 2015 by severedsolo

[BarryDennen12]

I voted for 60%. Probably in an hour or two I'll feel like I'm lowballing it a bit.

I think the game is more or less scope complete. But it's not really 'atmosphere' complete. I can't imagine playing the game without Chatterer. Other than the Mun, it feels like the other astronomical bodies haven't had an art pass since they first came out. The soundtrack also hasn't really ever been expanded. Other than part packs, most of my mods are ones that try to add the character you'd expect in a 'finished' game. Probe Control Room is another example.

Just for the regularity with which we see people saying about a mod, "WHY ISN'T THIS STOCK?" - I think it's fair to say the game isn't a full experience on its own. I'm not knocking Squad by any means, I love KSP, and there's no 'but' coming after that sentence. It's fun even in stock form, and the mods just add to it. I hope Squad are able to keep adding to the game for a good while yet.

[BlueCanary]

I don't think KSP by nature can be finished, whatever new content is added there'll be new bugs to be squashed and as real world space travel advances and computer technology advances to allow more features in KSP there'll be new content to be added.

As to the nearness to a functional presentable game, Claw's stock bug fix looks like it would remove a lot of the worst bugs in what I'd assume is quite a simple fix Squad could implement quickly, so maybe 90%? Although it crashes so much, maybe 80%? I'm not sure.

[Mat2ch]

80% finished, Most of the game is done but lots of room for polish and improvement.

Would like to see more time put into Career mode and some more parts.

I'm mostly with you, polishing, fine-tuning. Like: You can leave some buildings with ESC, others not. Some visual updates, like clouds, dust, rain, wind. I'd like to have a storm and a message: Heavy storm, bad time to launch, continue?

[theend3r]

I chose 90 % as the game is basically finished but missing some important things:

• As mentioned above, planet detail. Still no reason to visit the planets other than sense of achievement.
  
• Better atmospheres (clouds, temperature, wind). If the goal is boring then at least the journey needs to be detailed.
  
• Load on demand. No better time to do this than now when they're reworking large part of the code.
  
• New planet(s).
  

[randomness5555]

Kerbal is pretty near done (80%). The game is superb, and IMO it goes up with naval ops, inazuma 11, minecraft, monster hunters 3u and 4u and a few others as games REALLY worth playing. However, I REALLY want more things to do on other worlds, and my main want is caves. I don't care how they do it, but deep complex cave systems for exploring, and also maybe objects that are randomly distributed around the planets which can be recovered for extra science (say, a pink rock on minmus, it's not green so it's probably worth investigating ect). At the moment, apart from the challenge there isn't masses that can be done when you reach another world-you can't even admire the scenery because most of it is boring. Oh, and I would like it to crash less-but it's still a lot more stable than some games.

[Superfluous J]

People keep talking about "game-breaking bugs" but are surprisingly vague about what they are. Can I have some examples please (ones that are reproducable in stock only)?

Use the claw extensively and your ship will eventually explode or stop mid-orbit and think it's landed. And any ship it touched could become infected with this like a virus.

Change scenes many many times and the game will run out of memory. (I haven't confirmed this in 1.0.4 but I have heard it from others)

Though the bugs I'm mostly annoyed with are the non-game-breaking bugs that may as well be, because they make me want to not play.

[steve_v]

People keep talking about "game-breaking bugs" but are surprisingly vague about what they are. Can I have some examples please (ones that are reproducable in stock only)?

Picture playing with no reverts, no quicksaves - it is a valid difficulty setting.

IMO, anything that causes me to lose hours of play under these circumstances qualifies.

Examples:

Docking ports not releasing.

Claw related physics bugs.

Random unexplained overheating.

Engines that "cannot activate while stowed" (and aren't).

Kerbals ejecting violently from hatches.

Random orbit changes coming out of timewarp.

Infinite ragdolling.

Surface bases leaping into the sky and exploding on reload.

Unintentional kraken drives and phantom torque from clipped parts.

Even the occasional NAN kraken for no reason whatsoever.

The list goes on.

Any one of these is aggravating enough that I don't want to play any more, and therefore game-breaking.

Some can even permanently corrupt saves or craft in play - the claw/frozen orbit bug being the most obvious example.

If you want more, go have a look through the support subforum sometime.

Please, it's finished when this stuff stops happening, and I don't have to save-scum every time I do anything.

Edited August 30, 2015 by steve_v
More came to mind.

[Corw]

Picture playing with no reverts, no quicksaves - it is a valid difficulty setting.

This is actually an excellent yardstick. Would you play ironman mode in current release? If your answer is no because you do not trust the game to mess you up, no, it is not finished.

It is an excellent late beta, but mediocre 1.0. Yes, it has all the systems needed to be called 1.0 in, but they are rather rough on the edges and may leave you with some cuts and bruises.

[Broax]

I personally think the game can't be considered 'complete' without a working win64 version. Aside from the persistent bugs the game has, for me what really kills it is bad optimization. I also think career mode could use a bit more love (as it seems to be the case with this next update). A lot of the issues I have with this game seem to be addressed in the 1.1 update so maybe now I'll be able to say it's 100% gold-status worthy for me. As it stands now I'd give it an 80% at best.

[cantab]

I'll call KSP 90% done. Basically all the essential features are in, though I'd like to see better info and instruments (a la KER) and life support added. What's left though is mainly bugfixes and optimizations.

But there's a catch. "The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."

[Linear]

70% - agree that most features are in, but I think there's a good amount of time that needs to be spent on polishing, finishing main features and adding smaller ones.

[Just Jim]

Myself... I hope it's never finished!!! hehehe

I don't really like the idea of restarting a career, but I love when we get new stuff to play with!!!

[InterCity]

80%. I'd like if it was getting a lot of new content as computers and spaceflight evolve, though.

[Life on Europa]

when 1.1 comes out,and hopefully hopefully hopefully hopefully he will deliver what people saying he supposed to deliver...with the new ram usage i would say IMO the game is at 80%-90% of being finished.

than we can just wait for official stable and smooth multiplayer from squad,but that may never happens...

[Thomassino]

IMO, KSP still lacks one feature - eclipse shadows. Whenever I see Kerbin eclipsing Mun, and Mun is fully lit like nothing is happening, I feel the pain of millions of souls dying...

[Majorjim!]

So much truth in this thread. Squad take note! Your fans are speaking.

[Kerbal01]

Need to expand more horizontally, they've established a good framework for expansion. 1.0 was rushed, what is now 1.04 should have been 1.0. Fix all the bugs that have been around since the beggining ( and the new ones that crop up with each update) before moving on to extras like console ports.

[BoomerDog9]

I'd like to add that I certainly agree with a lot that's been said here. There are some bugs I'd like to see squashed, but none of these are seriously impacting my gameplay (at least, not on my Win-7 64-bit rig).

I rate KSP as 90% 'finished'; once a real 64-bit .exe is introduced, some bugs are fixed, and these new features are rolled out in 1.1, I think that would satisfy my definition of 'complete', especially given this amazing mod community taking advantage of the game's incredible extensibility.

What I'd like to see further explored (either in mods or in the 'stock' game):

* Discovering life on some of the planets/asteroids. Anyone remember 'Starflight'? One of the things you could do in that game was bag-n-tag alien lifeform samples (plant and animal) for cash-on-delivery when you returned to the stardock. Something that lets me track, analyze, capture, and retrieve sample of alien life would add some interest.

* More in-depth geological exploration. Another 'Starflight' feature was the ability to fill your cargo hold with precious metals and ores, and bring them back for money. The ISRU systems out there seem to tackle this mainly as part of a method of refueling ships and making parts. Would like to be able to harvest industrial crystals, rare-earth metals, precious metals and gems, and interesting minerals, and to be able to put examples of these in a 'natural history museum' trophy-case at the KSC.

* Space-race competition. It'd be nice to have the concept of competition for space achievements and space resources with other Kerbal nationalities in the game as NPC races. It would certainly add an additional layer of motivation to the experience.

Things like map-editor support and multiplayer would be nice at some point, but I really think those sorts of things require expansion-level support, and should only be rolled out as a thoroughly designed and tested package, not on an after-thought basis to round out an incremental version release.

Keep up the good work, Squad, I'm at over 900 hours played with 50 installed mods and still haven't lost any enthusiasm for Kerbal Space Program!

[legoclone09]

That people (who may have spent "tons of hours") are here complaining is simply an indication that they care. If it wasn't a worthwhile game I would have quit in disgust long ago. But beta testing is (apparently, says squad) over now, time for some polish and bugfixes.

I have yet to finish the tech tree, ever. Because bugs.

I am also counting all those "do over" missions, because bugs. That accounts for much time.

Do-overs are worthless, just complete the contract vis debug and blow up the stages of thhe rocket that won't return.

[Joonatan1998]

<70, hopefully

[problemecium]

Weird. I could have sworn I posted in here. Anyway:

IMO, they should have kept 0.90 as 0.26 as originally expected and called the 1.0 release "0.90 Beta." This would probably make the upcoming 1.1 be 0.91. I feel like all the important mechanics are covered, but there's cleaning, optimizing, bugfixing, and plenty of minor tweaks to be addressed before we ought to call it "done," even if future upgrade patches are planned.

...and I concur wholeheartedly on the Glue Kraken. I just keep hoping they'll randomly decide to fix it in 1.1 or some such.

[Renegrade]

...and I concur wholeheartedly on the Glue Kraken. I just keep hoping they'll randomly decide to fix it in 1.1 or some such.

...Glue Kraken? What's that?

(your post is the only one that thread search says has the word 'glue' in it)

[Thegamer211]

...Glue Kraken? What's that?

(your post is the only one that thread search says has the word 'glue' in it)

Once, when I was messing around with my space shuttle, the middle fuel tank got glued(and I mean stuck) to the shuttle after I decoupled.

Probably that.

[Moach]

How do you finish, that which has not started?

no wait, that makes no sense...

...eh... I'm afraid this thread has asked an unanswerable question -- it is not about how "finished" the game is.. even though one may argue (and have one hell of a good point in it) that games are in their deepest core, a form of art -- and art is never finished in an author's eye - only abandoned - there's always more to do, something to improve

it'll never be finished..... no game ever is

that doesn't stop them from going public, being sold, and thereby making money, funding new development, feeding the positive feedback loop, lather, rinse, repeat....

so many games are released BEFORE being finished -- some are even DECREED "done" albeit anything but -- take "IL-2 Cliffs of Dover" for one... took a team of modders several years to crack it and "fix" most of the game... development time being non-negotiable didn't stop Ubi$oft from greed'ing their way into a forcibly hasty release

sure, it's awesome NOW... but that didn't come out of "magic" -- definitely didn't come from Ubi$soft

seems:

incompetence = corporateBudget² - developerEnthusiasm /( 1 + marketer2DevOutranking * nonTechManagementEffect)³;

these days....

Squad being tiny as it is bears very well for KSP, by that logic!

big bucks makes for big blunder - take EA (Evil & Associates) for one... money doesn't make good games, "actually giving a crap" does! -- another point for squad, who took up this "crazy idea" and reinvented themselves from a mexican electronic media (advertizing with geekware) company to a blooming testament of what indie games can ultimately accomplish

but back from digressing... KSP, like any games made by anyone who actually cares - and not under insane pressure from "lower brains above" to deliver impossible goals fed by greed and corporate self-aggrandizing - is by it's own nature never really "done"

because "done" implies - "I shall no longer dedicate any effort to this" -- which is to say, it either deserves or requires nothing more to be left as is for all of eternity....

and that's one hell of a commitment

of course, all things must pass, Valar Morghulis, you know... eventually, something's gonna give and enough will be enough... "officially" it'll be "over"

but will you?

will the people modding it already think they've seen enough?

Micro$oft "scrapped" Flight Simulator after FSX... it was "done" - or was it? -- well, ask these folks and you'll find their answer is a good deal distant from the "official" one...

so it's not really a question of when a game is done -- it's a question of "when are YOU done with a game"

are you really ever?

Edited August 30, 2015 by Moach