KSP being "mundane"

[Guest]

Well, I bet that the lad who wrote that article is either a:

a) Moon Landing Conspiracy Believer

b)."Why go to space when all problems on Earth haven't been solved?" type of person.

c) Person with an IQ that reads "Turn towards the Sun and water twice a day".

 

[Robotengineer]

KSP mundane? It really depends on how you play it. Also, KSP is not hyper-realistic, not even close. KSP with Realism Overhaul, gets close to hyper-realism, but it's still not real enough.

[goldenpsp]

It is amazing the difference a word can make.

I would respectively ask everyone to carefully read the first sentence:

Quote

Simulated games have been around for decades but a new crop of hyper-realistic and seemingly mundane simulators are gaining a mainstream audience.

They key word is "seemingly".  The addition of that word changes the nature from KSP being "mundane" and "seemingly mundane".  The latter, which I would agree with, is that KSP and many games like it may "seem" mundane on the surface.  What we all know is that under the surface it is far from mundane.

Edited January 10, 2016 by goldenpsp

[Evanitis]

18 minutes ago, goldenpsp said:

I would respectively ask everyone to carefully read the first sentence:

They key word is "seemingly".

Yes. But the title of the article is "The attraction of mundane video games". That title with bold letters sits above a KSP screenshot. That's enough for people to comment.

Again, it's just a poorly chosen adjective for the headline of an uninteresting article. But was it actually a bad choice of words? They say that even bad publicity is good publicity. It works - noone cared if they wrote 'realistic' instead. But alas, here we are, generating traffic for that site while we talk about semantics.

[Scotius]

I did read it. Still, building a plane, mobile refinery rig or a spaceship with a bunch of parts and your own imagination does not look mundane - no matter from which direction i'm looking at it. And there is not many other games allowing you do do just that. Well, apparently for the author of this article Mona Lisa should be mundane too - after all, it's just another painting. Just one of thousands.

[Francois424]

7 hours ago, dangerhamster said:

Another favourite is Silent Hunter 3 with the GWX mod where it is usual to spend several days of game time working out a convoys course and speed before spending several more days working yourself into a good approach position. Even launching one salvo then needs hours of real time low speed movement relying mostly on sonar with the occasional brief periscope exposure to work into an attack position and then getting clear of the escorts.

I guess it's a case of many expecting instant gratification rather than taking pleasure in doing something challenging and sometimes succeeding.

Although not as hardcore as you on the matter of submarine warfare ("Silent Service" and "Sub Battle (by Epyx)" on the AtariST about sums up my serious active years into the Submarine warfare), the problem of instant gratification you raised is a MAJOR ISSUE as far as I am concerned.  My favorite MMO's where both trashed by it by reverting to "easy-mode" where gear/levels are irrelevant (And as a result, most of the crafting too) and you just fly in 100'000x time warp until the end-game and cannot appreciate the journey anymore (SWTOR / WoW).  I can rage all I want on the subject, it's like a giant tsunami that rots anything it touches, it's quite annoying and keeps happening everywhere.

I've noticed the trend in other games too, and since WoT and WoWS was brought up, you can see in these game that the balance is clearly borked to oblivion by allowing 3-5 inch guns to burn Battleships to the ground and having for example the Yamato's turn radius nerfed from 660m to nearly a KM because the impatient, instant gratification ppl could not sink her fast enough and did not want to learn strategies/teamwork to be able to (easily) take it down.

If anyone does not get their action 'fix' from KSP which they find too 'Mundane' they can always go back to Call of Duty clones and Tomb Raider clones (which FF15 seems to be like...  Urrrggh).  And leave our "Prrrreeesscious" alone.  Not every game is made for the same genre, but these days it becomes harder to put your hands on something unique with the market being what it is.

A big thank you to the devs for making this game what it is and let it reap the glory where it is due.
KSP is awesome and don't let anyone tell you otherwise... well until you get your first memory crash, but soon(tm) that'll also be a thing of the past !

Edited January 10, 2016 by Francois424

[goldenpsp]

1 hour ago, Evanitis said:

Yes. But the title of the article is "The attraction of mundane video games". That title with bold letters sits above a KSP screenshot. That's enough for people to comment.

Again, it's just a poorly chosen adjective for the headline of an uninteresting article. But was it actually a bad choice of words? They say that even bad publicity is good publicity. It works - noone cared if they wrote 'realistic' instead. But alas, here we are, generating traffic for that site while we talk about semantics.

well yes, and article titles have always been accurate vs. attention grabbing.  The point still is that nowhere in the actual article are any of the games actually being called mundane.

[PnDB]

2 hours ago, GDJ said:

More like a introduction to a article. Not alot of data here to say that her "article" is positive or negative towards Simulators.

There's an audio segment (~13 minutes) associated with the article.  I could not listen to the entire thing, as I found the audio quite boring, and the audio engineer (if there was one) really needs to work on cleaning things up... some pretty muddy voices from interviewed people.

[SpacedCowboy]

As soon as I read the word "Kerbonauth", I knew there was no reason to read any further.

[AlamoVampire]

Its been said already but i will say it again. Its this climate of instant gratification and the utter refusal to use even an ounce of patience that is messing things up. 

Its the ones who cant stand to make the journey who call things that dont pander to them mundane. I could rant on but i wont.

[tater]

5 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

It is amazing the difference a word can make.

I would respectively ask everyone to carefully read the first sentence:

They key word is "seemingly".  The addition of that word changes the nature from KSP being "mundane" and "seemingly mundane".  The latter, which I would agree with, is that KSP and many games like it may "seem" mundane on the surface.  What we all know is that under the surface it is far from mundane.

Because manned spaceflight seems mundane? To whom? 

[Temstar]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

Because manned spaceflight seems mundane? To whom? 

It's a particularly touchy subject with manned spaceflight. After Apollo 11 (take that communist!) and Apollo 12 (we need to do it again to prove it's not a fluke) people were calling the later Apollo missions "mundane" or "routine" too, and look what happened to the last three.

These days ISS gets labeled as "doing circles in LEO and not going anywhere fast".

Basically there's always going to be a segment of the population that see space flight as waste of money and if you're here on the KSP forum reading this you probably are not very fond of that opinion. That's why this use of the word "mundane" strikes such a nerve.

[regex]

6 hours ago, Robotengineer said:

Also, KSP is not hyper-realistic, not even close. KSP with Realism Overhaul, gets close to hyper-realism, but it's still not real enough.

Exactly this.  Calling KSP "hyper-realistic" is hilarious, as is calling that collection of fluffy paragraphs an "article".

2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Its been said already but i will say it again. Its this climate of instant gratification and the utter refusal to use even an ounce of patience that is messing things up. 

That's why we have a 1/11th scale star system, right?

[Superfluous J]

I'm going to say this as cleanly and as respectably as I can.

This is a clear case of click-baiting. It's a poorly-researched article that mentions popular games, states a controversial opinion about them, and doesn't back it up. It's written specifically to get people to go to the web site and load ads.

And - like most click-bait articles - it's working wonderfully.

[monstah]

14 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I'm going to say this as cleanly and as respectably as I can.

This is a clear case of click-baiting. It's a poorly-researched article that mentions popular games, states a controversial opinion about them, and doesn't back it up. It's written specifically to get people to go to the web site and load ads.

And - like most click-bait articles - it's working wonderfully.

I'm thankful I read thru the topic before giving it my click. 

[razark]

To all the people complaining about the quality of the article:

Have you listened to the radio show portion?  Have you realized the "article" is just an introduction for the radio portion?

[Evanitis]

Was it an interesting recording or a mundane one?

I'd hate to turn off my music for -minutes- to find it out for myself.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Evanitis

[AlamoVampire]

@regex I have no comment as that was/is a design choice by Squad. For mor information on just why they chose the scale they did, please make all inquiries with the appropriate person or persons at squad.

i WILL however state that it is my sovereign opinion that you are making an assumption on my meaning or intent of my statement by possibly misconstruing my meaning by means intentional or accidental and it is my position to not give credence to you or the apparent assumption indicated by or hinted by your statement by a response of any kind, directly stated by me or implied by any means real or fictitious. This is thusly then by all intents is a non reply directly or alleged and thusly cannot be held to have any meaning real or implied. 

Thusly, I don't get what you mean.

Edited January 11, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[Joshwoo70]

I am actually surprised how classy is the forum on the topic  Keep it up!  

[Stargate525]

 

13 hours ago, Wallygator said:

We are talking about a GAME not a real space mission. Still, I respect your opinion.

However, I suggest anyone who thinks space is mundane should talk to or read about a REAL astronaut or Cosmonaut, I would expect they would not in any bit of their recollection of any actual space mission use the word "Mundane".

Also, things go wrong because the player screws up either during the mission or during mission design.

AND>>> Things also get exciting when everything works according to plan!

ANDAND>>>Kerbal skill level DOES NOT equate to player skill level - just in case there was any confusion.

ANDANDAND>>> Wait a minute... If I design and execute a mission wherein everything works perfectly so much that I experience little stress - then wow, mundane is actually a good thing from my player perspective.

And were I actually IN space, my answer would be different. I imagine if I had logged as many hours in space as I had on KSP, then my answer might be closer to 'routine.' And you're making the point for me in the last sentence; skill in this game does not equal more fun, it equals more routine, less surprises, and more monotony. Mundane isn't some curse word, it's a description. A fairly apt description when describing experienced players with KSP.

 

13 hours ago, Alshain said:

Umm, you do know about the time warp feature, right?  Please tell me you aren't waiting months to get where you are going.

Of course I know about time warp. It doesn't change the fact that even with max timewarp, getting to Jool still takes enough time to let me go and check my email. It also doesn't hurt my point that astonauts don't have timewarp. Apollo had a three day journey out, and a three day journey back, where there was almost nothing to do. In fact, one of the astronauts was quoted to say that "going to the Moon about as exciting as taking a trip to Pittsburgh."

I'd call that pretty bloody mundane.

[regex]

3 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Thusly, I don't get what you mean.

I was making fun of the fact that you were decrying the lack of patience and the desire for instant gratification "in this climate" (paraphrasing), and yet a sizable portion of KSP players would complain quite mightily, as experience around here has shown, if we had a more realistic solar system with more realistic launch times et al.  Context being the statement that KSP was "hyper-realistic".

Edited January 11, 2016 by regex

[JohnF]

The funny thing is that mundane originally referred to things belonging to 'mundus' - Latin for 'world' specifically separating them from 'heavenly' things. So the implication is that there's nothing 'celestial' about KSP.

[AlamoVampire]

@regex ok, i see what you did there. <rolls eyes> Now, if all you got from my post about an instant gratification climate being a problem and the scale of the kerbin system, I cannot help you as you went past my point. I still will stand by my statement of, I will not comment on the size of the kerbin system because that was not MY call. I am not now, nor have I been a designer OR affiliated with Squad beyond being a customer via steam. NOW, seeing as my point was missed, let me elucidate it. 

People now, here in 2016 live life at a pace that was unheard of even 35 years ago when things were slower. 35 years before that the pace of life was even slower. Look around you in public, how many people have their faces buried in their phones reading a text or some news story? How many of them are conducting business calls? People today, especially children who were born around the millennium cannot or will not sit down and play a game that takes you more than a handful of hours to beat? Not many I would wager. This is why games like Call of Duty or Battlefield 4 have such short single player campaigns. It is why games like Final Fantasy <either single player or say Final Fantasy XIV A Real Reborn> are populated by older gamers. We have the patience needed to see rewards that mean something. Heck, just recently <last month or so> a new patch was introduced that FORCES you to grind for an extremely long time to get just the first STAGE of the new relic weapon done, and then, its only for ONE SINGLE CLASS, want more? Do it again and again. This, in the instant gratification world we seem to live in is heresy, as it takes more than 10 minutes. 

It is the behavior of people who cannot slow down to enjoy the journey that I am calling out. They are the issue, not the scale of the Kerbin system here in KSP. Do I like a small system? Yes, but not because I am impatient, but because for me, knowing the limitations of the game being 32 bit make for me, adding more than a handful of mods a bad idea. I work with what I have. Now, as has been said before by others, that "article" was poorly done, most likely in the name of click baiting traffic. But, that in and of itself shows how impatient people are, to do the absolute least in an attempt for max gain. 

Now, if all you can do is try to make mock of what I am talking about, that is on you, and for that, I feel sorry for you. I do like a good conversation, but, that conversation must mean something, not just be a jousting match of no merit, which I consider making mock to be of absolutely no merit. 

I want to also point out that, I am not calling you or any other KSP player impatient, not in the slightest. There are after all mods that fix the scale of this game, and more power to those who can use them, choose to use them and ultimately enjoy them. What I AM saying is: impatient people who want instant gratification and have no patience to enjoy the journey to what ever reward they are after are the problem. As for those who think this game is mundane? Well thats their problem now isnt it?

Edited January 11, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, razark said:

To all the people complaining about the quality of the article:

Have you listened to the radio show portion?  Have you realized the "article" is just an introduction for the radio portion?

I did, but figured a tease-filled fluff piece of an article could only really be expected to lead to the same, only in a far more time-wasting form. I didn't even bother letting Flash load on the page before closing it.

Radio is just far too mundane for me.

[razark]

11 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

a tease-filled fluff piece of an article

But it's not an article.  That's like saying that a trailer is the entirety of a movie or a syllabus handed out on the first day of class is the same as attending every lecture.