How finished is KSP in your opinion?

[rkman]

If Squad stopped now, and all development ceased, we'd still have a playable game in that sense 1.0.x is "finished"

Just not "properly finished", by Squad's own admission.

[DoctorDavinci]

Just not "properly finished", by Squad's own admission.

You make it sound as if Squad is guilty of something

[Yukon0009]

By Harv's orginal goals that he set when he first developed KSP it would be more than complete.

However, currently it is still pretty buggy and lcks some features, so I would say 70-80.

[Starhawk]

I reread a (quite long) review/post I made back on the Official 0.90 Discussion thread before posting here. I had intended to point out the things I believe are unfinished, and I will. But rereading that post impresses me very much with how far we've actually come, and how many interesting and enriching new features have been added to the game.

I think that KSP has come a long way, despite some pretty big bumps in the road.

As to things that make it unfinished.

- Biomes. There is still tundra just west of KSC. Each of the munar craters is ringed by a narrow band of a different (far removed) biome, etc.

- Interaction with the maneuver node system could use some improvement. (Hopefully the UI rewrite will remove the current issues.)

- Still expecting those tier 0 buildings.

- I think more features being unlockable via building upgrades could enhance the progression in career mode and make it seem more finished.

- The tier 1 and 2 buildings still seem lacking in visual quality compared to the tier 3 buildings, and they actually look incomplete to me.

- The kerbal xp/roles system still seems unfinished to me. I'd reallly like to see four and five star skill levels in the various roles actually be useful/important in gameplay.

- I wonder if some sort of set pieces/milestones/moar easter eggs would improve progression in career mode. The challenge of exploration is interesting in it's own right, but the more there is to discover, the more there is drawing you to reach for distant destinations. This could make career mode (and exploration in general) feel a little more fleshed out.

- Other UI issues such as mouse clickthrough at different parts of the interface will also hopefully be solved by the UI rewrite, but until they are this seems unfinished.

- Game balance. This, of course, will always be a work in progress. One of the biggest issues with the release of 1.0, in my view, was that so much game balance work was lost because the drag bug was discovered so late in the process. Aero, thermal, economic systems all seem to need significant balancing to me. While I know the dev team works very hard to find game balance, it does seem to me to still need more tweaking or another balance pass after the fact and, therefore, unfinished. I'm fairly sure that if that bug had been caught earlier before the release of 1.0, it would have seemed much more balanced.

I'm hoping this doesn't sound too critical negative.

Happy landings!

Edited September 1, 2015 by Starhawk

[dsonbill]

Funny, I can't seem to find the 5% option anywhere?

[Accelerando]

It's an engine without a game.

[Tannerz]

more complete than the majority of the AAA titles that launch into 1.0 status from the major publishers. (I'm looking at you BF, and Batman)

[panzer1b]

Until the vast majority of repeateable bugs are fixed, and every part in the game works flawlessly its not done in my opinion (content wise i am happy with the game), its too buggy (although most have been fixed by 3rd party mods), and it has terrible optimization (U5 may or may not fix this portion).

Anyways, call it what it is, i cannot say its finished until its nearly bug free (or at least all of the game breaking krakens are fixed). Performance is also just meh, it works, but i cant have over 9000 parts loaded at the same time without massive lag (actually i crash at around 2000 reliably, with above 1500 impossible to play though, and ~500 is when the lag starts up).

That said, im quite happy with teh game as is (well with better atmospheres mod installed, makes game look so amazing with that mod), the majority of things (large part counts aside) work fine. The game looks pretty good even stock, and runs pretty well if you arent trying to fly a synchronized fleet of capital ships with 4-5 200 part ships at once.

And the things that are missing or lacking are fixed by mods, so all in all im quite happy with KSP (even if it has quite a way to go to be fully finished according to my standards).

Also, until the magic boulder returns i cannot claim it to be done either, that easter egg is the sole reason im still keeping an older version of the game around

Edited September 5, 2015 by panzer1b

[LadyAthena]

Is it "finished?" Yes. Can it be improved and added onto? definitely, and it is.

[dsonbill]

It's an engine without a game.

This. Very much this. They've got a whole movement engine completed!

more complete than the majority of the AAA titles that launch into 1.0 status from the major publishers. (I'm looking at you BF, and Batman)

Comparing this to any AAA game is inappropriate. For instance, most games (even really terrible ones) have more to do than just go from point A to point B.

[Carraux]

I voted for 60%, because there is no "Program" in "Kerbal Space Program".

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Can I change my vote to 50%?

We STILL lose command buttons on symmetrical parts?

The current fuel flow model sucks.

Smoke (from engines) sends my frame rate through the floor.

Planets FLICKER whenever I plot maneuver nodes.

the list goes on...

[CaptainApollo]

I believe it is finished, I mean, if it were to stop development this instant and just stay how it currently is, that would be all right with me because I think there is so much in the game, to me it really feels full. However, I will not complain about new stuff being added, at all!

[Kuansenhama]

I honestly think the game is nearly complete (90%). With the Unity 5 upgrade and 1.1, I think the devs will have completed the game. Most of the things that I think need to be added are very small things, most of which can be found with mods.

Things such as rover wheel and RCS sounds, waypoint manager and KER should be integrated into the game stock game. Tweak the contracts system should be made since contracts are often unbalanced and don't offer the most exciting/well balanced of missions. (I think I'm going to go berserk if I see one more tourism contract asking for 'Land on Eve' or 'Suborbital Spaceflight on Sun'.)

Ultimately, I think KSP has come to a point where the modding community is taking the the lead. Squad provides the framework, the core game, and the modders come in and add on their own touch to the game, allowing players to download the mods and customize their experience. Ultimately, what may end up happening is eventually Squad will run out of changes that they can make without conflicting with/overlapping/stealing a major modding project. (Recent updates have already integrated some mods.)

[RocketPilot573]

60%, needs career overhaul (hopefully new contracts next update will improve on that), and stock graphics are rather lame (The only thing that looks nice is KSC... tier 3 mind you, ok, the new spaceplane parts are pretty good I guess)..

[Renegrade]

We STILL lose command buttons on symmetrical parts?

That one's so old, it's practically a feature. However, also consider the inverse of it: there's no way to assign a command button to a single member of a symmetrical set WITHOUT that bug. :/ And then there's also the around part/around craft symmetry mode which doesn't seem to work, and then there's the bug where you'll get an 'around part' symmetry happening randomly.

The 80%+ reviewers must have played 15 minutes, blown up a few kerbals, and gone 'lel' at the explosions like some halfwit 'brah', and smacked an 80%+ score on it. Either that, or said, "This is a truly epic concept, so I'll forgive all the horrible flaws! Bravo!" (slightly more reasonable, but not entirely responsible)

The current fuel flow model sucks.

Indeed. Also the energy system is still heavily broken (engines can soak up energy when idle, requests for energy amounts will fail even if there's enough energy available, etc), and let's not even get started on weird heat bugs (especially after the 'skin' model was introduced).

[I_Killed_Jeb]

None of us really have the right to define KSP as "finished" or not, that is Squads prerogative, they have said they have met their original design goals, but it is clear they want to keep expanding.

I'm personally pretty tired of this argument, which I find trite. We shouldn't abandon our faculties because "it's Squad's game". Taking this kind of thinking to its logical endpoint, you don't have a right to say what I have the right to define, because it's my prerogative to define the world I live in.

The game is not a one way street where KSP is being birthed into a bottomless void; its purpose is to be used, played by its end-users, i.e. us. Therefore we of course have the right to have whatever opinion we deem fit of that experience, some of which will extend to its completeness. Don't sidetrack the discussion, which is a valid one, with these non-sequiturs.

[Lord Aurelius]

I said 50% mainly because the game engine still isn't completely done yet and much of the game (i.e. career mode) is still MIA and most of the content is still placeholders.

Many other games start with a solid game engine and still take a long time to develop simply because planning and developing a balanced, polished game (and all the features and game mechanics that entails) takes quite a bit of time to get everything working well.

Right now the game engine is still unfinished (hopefully the Unity 5 update will largely address that, but then there's multiplayer...) and there's still some game mechanics being added. Once all the systems are finally in place, it will still be quite a bit of work to balance and polish everything (for sandbox at least), not to mention the amount of work (and possibly new systems) that career mode needs to be more than just a grindy, limited sandbox.

I'm not trying to say this in a bad way, the game is still a lot of fun for what it is, but we're still a long ways from a "finished" product in my opinion.

[-Velocity-]

Give us clouds so that Kerbin, Eve, Laythe, and Duna actually look like rocky worlds with atmospheres, only then can anyone think about using the "f" word. Right now the lack of clouds on Kerbin in particular is very galling and immersion breaking, since we spend so much time there. I have a hard time understanding why it's not a higher priority.

[Columbia]

Honestly, I just wish for better performance. Keep the game features as is, remove parts if you need to, just.. please.. make it perform better. At this point, I don't even care about clouds or new parts.. I just want the game to be less PC-melting. (12 FPS?! Why?!)

I lag much more in KSP stand-alone than War Thunder and Flight Simulator X both open.

I'm happy they're changing to Unity 5.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

There's an old adage in software development:

"The last 10% takes 10 times longer than you expect. This is cyclical."

Edited September 7, 2015 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[herman]

It's 80% finished, but the last 20% will take 80% of the time, never get done at all, or get done by modders.

[Carraux]

60%, needs career overhaul (hopefully new contracts next update will improve on that), and stock graphics are rather lame (The only thing that looks nice is KSC... tier 3 mind you, ok, the new spaceplane parts are pretty good I guess)..

In its current state, Carreer mode is totally screwed. Its game mechanics are unbalanced and do not work well together. Not at all

Mainly:

- The contract system

- The science gathering mechanics

- The tech tree

(If you think, this three points are resembling more or less the complete career mode, then.. er... well... yes)

Besides that, career is way too repetitive (science mission: Fly there, collect data, fly back, land) without any surprises. And you need science only for unlocking tech in the tech tree. And this tech you only need (more or less) for science missions. This is the serpent Ouroboros with a very, very small diameter. Du to the very unbalanced Science Lab, flying to Mün and Minmus is totally sufficient to unlock more or less the complete tech tree. And after that (career is then Sandbox with money) you may ask yourself: Why in the hell should go to any other place?

That's one of the biggest failures of the game: There is no real motivation offered by the game to visit other planets/moons.

The other big mistake is that Squad wasn't very good in choosing ideas for the game mechanics and that they refused to abandom concepts, after a lot of people found out that they won't work. In fact, they tried to "heal" bad conecpts by incorporating additional weird concepts or rules.

As I mentioned in another thread: Due to to fact, that you can rescue Kerbals and getting funds AND reputation for it instead of hiring Kerbals for much funds in the astronaut complex, the astronaut complex is rendered now completely superflouos. I think, Squad should have taken more time for brainstorming/designing the game mechanics as a whole instead of implementing them step by step without looking for side effects.

At this point I think, the whole career mode is so screwed, it should be completely rewritten.

[Frank_G]

It is finished for me, when it runs stable and all sound effects, visual effects and animations are in. There are also missing some announced construction aids, like delta V through engineers, lifting curve in the SPH and so on. If those features are in, the game will be finished in my opinion.

More parts, other worlds and such stuff would be nice for expansion updates.

[322997am]

My opinion of finished for KSP is a fun and challenging space flight simulator with many different environ,ends to play in