Will there be more random gamebraking changes to the game mecanics in the futur?

[Gooru]

I played KSP for 3 or 4 years now and was always looking forward to the release.

I never liked the Idea that a change from a patch could destroy a savegame i put in months of playtime, but it was ok to me in early access.

I stopped playing around one and a half years ago to await release and then started my so-long-planed-great-career-savegame.

But now i have realize that squad keeps changing things that destroy my crafts or make them unusable mid-mission.

Will this game ever be "stable" to play it without the risk of loosing all due to some random change in a patch?

[Keras]

Yes, every update can break your crafts. You should always finish all missions you want to complete before updating. The game is only "stable" as long as you don`t update it.

You could also take the route many others go here and have multiple KSP installs. One stable version you keep around for your long-planned career and another for experimenting on stuff that you keep up to date (you could also use that to test if the update breaks your crafts).

[ZooNamedGames]

It's the issue with games which receive constant updates. You can pick a single version, but things will always change. Same deal with Minecraft, it's "stable", but your saves game will never be the same.

[Guest]

I played KSP for 3 or 4 years now and was always looking forward to the release.

I never liked the Idea that a change from a patch could destroy a savegame i put in months of playtime, but it was ok to me in early access.

I stopped playing around one and a half years ago to await release and then started my so-long-planed-great-career-savegame.

But now i have realize that squad keeps changing things that destroy my crafts or make them unusable mid-mission.

Will this game ever be "stable" to play it without the risk of loosing all due to some random change in a patch?

The answer to your question, I believe, is yes it will. That's the simple answer. But, it will not "stabilize" because of a label like "1.0" or "beta" or "end of early access." These are traditional labels that no longer have the same meaning in today's market as they did in the past when we went to Walmart and purchased disks. I suggest you ignore the labels, for they exist only to placate certain segments of the market. Instead, focus on the fact that the development team continues to try and improve the game. Does these mean that when new game play mechanics are introduced that stuff will break and/or need balancing? Yes, absolutely. So, when can you expect the game to stabilize? According to whatever happens first : HarvesteR says it done and moves on to the next thing or sales decline to the point that it no longer makes sense to continue development. Just my opinions based on what I've seen since .18.

[Korizan]

I can't think of a single patch upgrade or change that has destroyed a ship sense 1.0.2 came out.

Example ?

[Gooru]

I can't think of a single patch upgrade or change that has destroyed a ship sense 1.0.2 came out.

Example ?

I´ve a build a big interplanetary ship with living quaters, lab, Res-converter, landing shuttles and engines.

It took seven launches (and a "little bit" of planning) to put it together.

I didn´t even know, but when i started KSP some day steam had updated it to 1.0.5

Now the engines of my ship are missing. They are simply gone. So it´ll stay in its last orbit forever i guess.

And the Aerodynamics have changed, so my landing shuttles are no longer able to do what they are made for: landing.

This is annoying

[ZooNamedGames]

I´ve a build a big interplanetary ship with living quaters, lab, Res-converter, landing shuttles and engines.

It took seven launches (and a "little bit" of planning) to put it together.

I didn´t even know, but when i started KSP some day steam had updated it to 1.0.5

Now the engines of my ship are missing. They are simply gone. So it´ll stay in its last orbit forever i guess.

And the Aerodynamics have changed, so my landing shuttles are no longer able to do what they are made for: landing.

This is annoying

what engines were you using? It may be a bug, and not an update issue. If the engine no longer existed within KSP the whole craft would not have loaded.

Shuttles actually land easier and are far more controllable. Now I can build a shuttle that LOOKS like one because it isn't dependent on CoM/CoL. You just like the thick soup atmosphere.

[Gooru]

what engines were you using? It may be a bug, and not an update issue. If the engine no longer existed within KSP the whole craft would not have loaded.

Shuttles actually land easier and are far more controllable. Now I can build a shuttle that LOOKS like one because it isn't dependent on CoM/CoL. You just like the thick soup atmosphere.

I´m talking of the stock nuclear engines.

I´m sure you now can build some new things that are great, but this doesn´t help me with a big running mission on the other side of the solar system, that took a loot of time and (play)money to set up.

This is not league of legends or somthing were a game lasts 20 minutes or less. This is a game were some people will never do more than one playtrought.

[Harry Rhodan]

I didn´t even know, but when i started KSP some day steam had updated it to 1.0.5

Have you ever thought about not launching the game through Steam or even from a different folder that is not automatically updated?

[paul23]

They should just do what sensible companies do:

Push bug fixes in a separate channel from the new releases. New releases break things - bug fixes don't. And each version keeps getting bug fixes till it works without bugs. (My old games from cd in the 90s never had bug fixes - they just worked. Why can't companies do that nowadays?)

[ZooNamedGames]

I´m talking of the stock nuclear engines.

I´m sure you now can build some new things that are great, but this doesn´t help me with a big running mission on the other side of the solar system, that took a loot of time and (play)money to set up.

This is not league of legends or somthing were a game lasts 20 minutes or less. This is a game were some people will never do more than one playtrought.

Odd- send this to Squad. Don't be hating the update for a BUG. The engine now uses LF and not the LFO mix, but that shouldn't cause the engine to disappear. Maybe they overheated and exploded? Check your Flight Log (accessible by F3).

No this isn't LOL, and it never will be. Everything you want to do takes hours, but that's why you quicksave often and if keeping things safe are THAT important, you also use no mods and send every crash/bug report to Squad. This is the rules of every game. Even LOL. Now please, for the sake of this happy community, don't complain. Let's find the issue and solve it, I'd be more than happy to. But don't hate Squad, they're doing the best they can. If you think they aren't, then I'd like to see you do better.

- - - Updated - - -

They should just do what sensible companies do:

Push bug fixes in a separate channel from the new releases. New releases break things - bug fixes don't. And each version keeps getting bug fixes till it works without bugs. (My old games from cd in the 90s never had bug fixes - they just worked. Why can't companies do that nowadays?)

Because games are vastly more complex. Instead of managing a point and click game which pushes your RAM to the max when you play it, now you have a highly complicated physics game with open world and open creator. Not only do you have to bugfix for every possible combination (which is theoretically unlimited) but also test each one of those options in every possible situation, circumstance and so on.

If they went and focused 100% on bugfixes, we would be stuck on 1.0.5 for decades. They have to keep the game interesting or the game base is lost. This isn't the 1990s where you buy a game from BlockBuster and you play it until your parents can get you another, now for $50 I can buy 3-5 games INSTANTLY thanks to programs like Steam, Origin, and such.

If you want simpler logic, it's like telling a game tester who usually works with the N64, PS1 and Xbox to stop and play test a few games from the Atari 5200. Two different worlds.

[Temeter]

Yeah, it's really a horrible experience playing a game that gets constantly improved and expanded. Couldn't they have stopped updating at 0.18 or so?

[Alshain]

Constant breaking is what happens when you treat a releasd "1.0" game as if it were an early access game. The engine change breaking things is an inevitable thing to happen, but at some point they do need to stop screwing with aerodynamics changes that break everything you've built every patch.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Alshain

[Murph]

Constant breaking is what happens when you treat a releasd "1.0" game as if it were an early access game. The engine change breaking things is an inevitable thing to happen, but at some point they do need to stop screwing with aerodynamics changes that break everything you've built every patch.

Nope, you're dead wrong about "they do need to stop". They need to keep going with the changes and tweaks, and not let existing saves tie their hands. Over time, each feature will naturally mature to the point where it doesn't change much (i.e. doesn't cause anything to break) over versions.

Squad, KEEP BREAKING STUFF! Break it as often as you need to, as long as the overall result is pushing forwards towards perfection. The approach so far is just fine, I wholeheartedly endorse and support your development practices, and do not see any major problems with them.

[ModZero]

My old games from cd in the 90s never had bug fixes - they just worked. Why can't companies do that nowadays?

Games back then had bugs, some even becoming computer games "canon" (see: nuclear Gandhi). Oh, and how many patches, sometimes significant, I installed on my various Quake versions, for example. And games from the eighties were pretty much strings of bugs held together with duct tape and keyboard gunk.

[A35K]

What I don't understand is why they launched 1.0 (which should signal a mostly finished game), when they clearly had in mind to change and add so much more. Surely they could have continued calling it a beta until there were no more releases (except bugfixes). That's partially why I spend most of my time on my 0.23 save, which I still use as my main save, and I just tend to replace what the newer versions have using mods (eg. Spaceplane parts? B9. Larger 3.75m rockets? KW Rocketry. ISRU? Interstellar... etc.). I can't stand spending a huge amount of time designing and planning a mission and then let an update make it all worthless.

[ModZero]

What I don't understand is why they launched 1.0 (which should signal a mostly finished game), when they clearly had in mind to change and add so much more. Surely they could have continued calling it a beta until there were no more releases (except bugfixes). That's partially why I spend most of my time on my 0.23 save, which I still use as my main save, and I just tend to replace what the newer versions have using mods (eg. Spaceplane parts? B9. Larger 3.75m rockets? KW Rocketry. ISRU? Interstellar... etc.). I can't stand spending a huge amount of time designing and planning a mission and then let an update make it all worthless.

Things becoming totally static after "release" is actually pretty much a video game anomaly  if Photoshop stopped changing after 1.0, people would be understandably angry. Now, for games it has some sense  many games are narrative-driven, and do have a "complete" (or abandoned, as a certain quote attributed to several painters and writers says) state. On the other hand, for simulations (and simulation-ey), this isn't as good a fit, which you can see in quite a plenty games that embrace some kind of continuous development approach  see DCS, Train Simulator, Dwarf Fortress (arguably not finished, ever, but it's still a similar situations), Prison Architect, and so many others. These games evolve for as long as the basic structure can take it (and sometimes way past that point). Frankly, I believe the main reason it's not more common is the negative attitude gamers have towards upgrade pricing (i.e. we'd rather have KSP 2 than pay money for a significant upgrade of original KSP) and extensions (pardon me, "DLC", the lifeblood of Train Simulator), which makes this model often unsustainable in the long term (unless you're an MMO, and even that is questionable nowadays).

[Tourist]

They should just do what sensible companies do:

Push bug fixes in a separate channel from the new releases. New releases break things - bug fixes don't. And each version keeps getting bug fixes till it works without bugs. (My old games from cd in the 90s never had bug fixes - they just worked. Why can't companies do that nowadays?)

That's not my recollection of early gaming. In the floppy disk era at least, especially with multiple disk installs, it was always an anxious wait, because frequently on the last disk (at least so it seemed) a certain famous general would interfere ("General Failure, reporting for duty, Sir!"). I think it was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis where I had to buy and return about two copies before the third copy finally worked (I think it was about 7-9 floppies, error on second to last disk).

I think virtually all gamers over a certain age get sweaty palms, and start praying to the programming gods around the 75% mark on any install, even though that era has passed... just from Pavlovian conditioning.

The CD era was slightly better. But in those pre-internet dark ages, a game-breaking bug, was a game-breaking bug. There were no patches or on-going quality control. If it didn't work at the time you bought it, is was never going to work. The worse type was the game-breaking bug that reared its ugly head halfway through a play-through. I had one of those in Stonekeep, about midway through.... thankfully it wasn't totally game-breaking. I just had to uninstall, delete my save-games and start from scratch.

Don't even get me started on all the fiddling around with boot discs, system settings, and of course, games which just outright did not like your hardware and that was it.

Trust me, there was no golden age of gaming.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Tourist

[Alshain]

Nope, you're dead wrong about "they do need to stop". They need to keep going with the changes and tweaks, and not let existing saves tie their hands. Over time, each feature will naturally mature to the point where it doesn't change much (i.e. doesn't cause anything to break) over versions.

Squad, KEEP BREAKING STUFF! Break it as often as you need to, as long as the overall result is pushing forwards towards perfection. The approach so far is just fine, I wholeheartedly endorse and support your development practices, and do not see any major problems with them.

Then the game might as well be unplayable. When you buy a released game you have the expectation that you will be able to play it without it constantly breaking down and you have to start over from scratch. That's expected in early access, but Squad insisted this be a released version and now they need to treat it like one.

If I were to buy Fallout 4 and 2 weeks after I started playing, Bethesda came in and said... "you have to start over now!" How do you think people are going to react to that? And then even if they do it, four weeks go by again, time to start over once more!

Squad did it to themselves, they rushed the release and now they are in a position where they need to change the game but the perception of release means finished is hurting their image a bit.

[Murph]

What I don't understand is why they launched 1.0 (which should signal a mostly finished game)

1.0 has never been any guaranteed indication of "end of development" or "finished". It just indicates that it is feature complete for the first full release (i.e. contains everything they feel it needs to be a full release). Every developer gets to freely define exactly what 1.0 means for each of their products. Squad were quite clear that 1.0 was in no way the end of development, before they even released 0.90. Not once did they get anywhere close to suggesting or implying that 1.0 would not be followed by tweaks, fixes, and general polish, or that there would be no more issues with older saves breaking. Given the complexity of the product (due to the literally infinite possibilities for use cases), it was entirely expected and predictable that there would be a few minor releases after 1.0 to put some polish on it.

They did the right thing, as taking it out of "early access" has some sales and marketing benefits for them. Be glad that it's an excellent developer that actually wants to properly squash every last bug, complete every last bit of polishing, and actually gives a damn about customers. Many big developers (e.g. EA and all of the names they have assimilated) slap a 1.0 label on any old incomplete barely functional crap and shovel it out the door with a price twice that of KSP; then publicly demonstrably outright lie about things to customers; then ignore major problems until everyone loses interest in it and gives up.

- - - Updated - - -

Then the game might as well be unplayable. When you buy a released game you have the expectation that you will be able to play it without it constantly breaking down and you have to start over from scratch. That's expected in early access, but Squad insisted this be a released version and now they need to treat it like one.

Nobody is forcing you to run the latest update. You can carry on with your existing save for as long as you like. It's your choice to use the latest version or not. You can play 1.0 from now to the end of time, without ever starting over, if you want to.

Please, Squad, KEEP BREAKING STUFF! When there's something in the product that isn't quite right yet, and when the product gives everyone the trivial ability to keep using the older version, there's absolutely nothing wrong with breaking stuff to improve the product.

[Dre4dW0rm]

The answer to your question, I believe, is yes it will. That's the simple answer. But, it will not "stabilize" because of a label like "1.0" or "beta" or "end of early access." These are traditional labels that no longer have the same meaning in today's market as they did in the past when we went to Walmart and purchased disks. I suggest you ignore the labels, for they exist only to placate certain segments of the market. Instead, focus on the fact that the development team continues to try and improve the game. Does these mean that when new game play mechanics are introduced that stuff will break and/or need balancing? Yes, absolutely. So, when can you expect the game to stabilize? According to whatever happens first : HarvesteR says it done and moves on to the next thing or sales decline to the point that it no longer makes sense to continue development. Just my opinions based on what I've seen since .18.

Sorry mate but this is BS. Good developer always thinks about backward compatibility, ESPECIALLY when a new version comes as a micro number 1.0.4-1.0.5. If this breaks things, then the devs simply do horrible job, or don't care. I myself am in this industry for 20 years now, and I would fire developer for doing this immediately.

[ModZero]

[quote name='Dre4dW0rm']I myself am in this industry for 20 years now, and I would fire developer for doing this immediately.[/QUOTE]

I, in turn, would fire immediately a developer who thinks the same restrictions should apply to computer games and storm surge protection barrier driver software.

EDIT: and beyond that hyperbole (I would just rant at them, I'm not the kind of a person who would fire someone for such a weak reason), I wish people had more respect for people who worked hard and brought us a successful piece of software. And IT in general could use a lot more of respect towards coworkers, by the way. Starting with an idea that a good developer never says something like "Sorry mate but this is BS." Edited November 15, 2015 by ModZero

[Coyote27]

Personally I don't expect any more massive changes that make craft behave differently like the aero/heat updates. The aero is probably right where we want it, and the heat seems to be getting where we want it too, so if those change in the future it probably won't be by very much. What I would expect in the near future are some new parts that might suddenly feel essential, and brand new systems like the communication relays which won't really break anything but would add a new mechanic that could change how future craft are designed. I imagine that there's a lot coming that I or the rest of you really have no clue about so far though.

[Dre4dW0rm]

[quote name='ModZero']I, in turn, would fire immediately a developer who thinks the same restrictions should apply to computer games and storm surge protection barrier driver software.

EDIT: and beyond that hyperbole (I would just rant at them, I'm not the kind of a person who would fire someone for such a weak reason), I wish people had more respect for people who worked hard and brought us a successful piece of software. And IT in general could use a lot more of respect towards coworkers, by the way. Starting with an idea that a good developer never says something like "Sorry mate but this is BS."[/QUOTE]

Because of thinking like this the gaming industry goes down the drain pipe in terms of quality of product and delivery for the past few years. I had way too much experience with behaviour like this, which is very expensive. The game is out of BETA now, so the erratic and random rules don't apply anymore.
I stopped playing KSP only because it break saves or crafts with every release in one way or another, and I don't have that much time to keep starting over and over again. Yes, I could keep playing the old version, but it doesn't make sense. I want the latest and more stable version, but I can't actually play it.
The idea was good, but execution is poorly managed, even though the game works in general.
I would really like if the devs read forums at least once, gather all the real issues and missing features people were reporting all this time, and implement them once and for all - but it's been few years and it didn't happen, so I lost hope.

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[quote name='Coyote27']Personally I don't expect any more massive changes that make craft behave differently like the aero/heat updates. The aero is probably right where we want it, and the heat seems to be getting where we want it too, so if those change in the future it probably won't be by very much. What I would expect in the near future are some new parts that might suddenly feel essential, and brand new systems like the communication relays which won't really break anything but would add a new mechanic that could change how future craft are designed. I imagine that there's a lot coming that I or the rest of you really have no clue about so far though.[/QUOTE]

Well, next version is about to bring the new Unity, with PhysX support and more, so I believe almost everything will break.

[Stargate525]

[quote name='Dre4dW0rm']The game is out of BETA now, so the erratic and random rules don't apply anymore. [/QUOTE]
In name only. I'm still pretty convinced that the only reason they decided to go with 1.0 was because their sales figures were dropping.