(Dear squad:) Soon™

[Robje]

Dear Squad,

First of, i would like to say i truly love KSP. I clock in at 1000+ hours of game time. This is exactly my kind of game. I love the community, I always stay on top of the devnotes and i love where development is going.
That being said, I seem to remember that, a year or two ago, KSP's long term plans were being discussed. The eventual ''scope'' was being outlined, the resource tree was being scrapped, multiplayer development after finishing was being discussed and your were taking a step backwards to make better, more consious, steps forward in the future.The future is partly here and KSP has been out of Beta for months. Perhaps it is just me but i have become totally out of touch with your long-term plans for KSP (other then the next update and that multiplayer will become available eventually). Obviously i am not asking for release dates or guarantees but, as the wiki is quite out of date and fragmented, i would like to request that you go on record and maybe answer some questions:

Will KSP ever be finished?
Or will you keep updating indefinitely? If so, what did the release of 1.0 mean? Will there be a ''definitive'' version in the (near) future (,only adressing bugs afterwards)?

Are you planning features that you are not yet working on?
I believe this is what you called ''scope completion''. Or are you just de-bugging, balancing and optimising as of now?

Perhaps you would like to remind me/us of said scope?
Maybe you can elaborate or just update our understanding of your long term plans for KSP.

Please do not take any of this as critisism. I appologise if this is too much to ask for or i have missed loads of information elsewhere on the forum. Any information will be appreciated and helpfull. I dare say at least some of the community agree.

 

Kind regards,

Robje

[Sir_Robert]

Much like most games these days, 1.0 is not finished, it is release. It is the version where they say 'this is our game, we charge money for this' (not counting early access. You buy an early access game because you want to support it's development. You buy a complete game because you are willing to buy that game as it is). And after that comes free DLC (updates). Many games do this. The Witcher 3 did it, Paradox does it all the time (brings out free updates along with their paid DLC).

As for the scope: Squad has never had a public list of their scope, and for good reason. Ideas change. What seems like a great idea now may turn out to be awful in a few months. If you make such a list public, there will always be outcry whenever you change your mind, regardless of the reason. Rather than put up with that, they just don't tell us.
Take the game as it is. And if some new update comes up in the future, see it as a cool new thing

[Tex]

5 hours ago, Robje said:

Will KSP ever be finished?

The game is in 1.0, meaning out of early access. Games update all the time, and while they add new content, the development period of the game is 100% over. As in, it is finished. Anything else is extra goodies that we can all enjoy.

Quote

Are you planning features that you are not yet working on?

Yes, read the devblogs. They talk about stuff sometimes, saying "oh yeah, we've considered these things and feel like they'd go good with the game but here's what we've been up to."

Quote

Perhaps you would like to remind me/us of said scope?

Again, read the devblogs. They contain the information you're looking for. I can't recall every detail of every blog, obviously, but if you haven't been reading them consistently or over long periods of time then it's pretty certain you'll miss some pieces of information.

[klgraham1013]

Releasing finished games is so last decade.

[Kokanee]

I disagree that KSP is anywhere near finished. The programming needs ALOT of work; I run into heap errors all the time.

 

The sheer mountain of mods out there show that SQUAD has a lot of work to do in updating the content and quality of the game; limit yourself to the stock parts and you'll quickly run out of stuff to do; and the stock game looks like it was built five years ago, especially comparted to Proot's Renaissance mod.

[Cornholio]

15 hours ago, Kokanee said:

I disagree that KSP is anywhere near finished. The programming needs ALOT of work; I run into heap errors all the time.

 

The sheer mountain of mods out there show that SQUAD has a lot of work to do in updating the content and quality of the game; limit yourself to the stock parts and you'll quickly run out of stuff to do; and the stock game looks like it was built five years ago, especially comparted to Proot's Renaissance mod.

This couldn't have been said any better.

[Azimech]

I think Squad knows what a powerful tool they have by now, and they'd be wise to develop it for many years to come.

Edited February 26, 2016 by Azimech

[eddiew]

My 2p would be that Unity 5, performance improvements, and working 64 bit is the real "out of beta". What we have right now still feels like early access. But we love it anyway 

That said, the latest dev notes have shown that Squad are planning to keep save files compatible - this is a "big deal"^TM and means that they are taking 1.0 very seriously as the launch version. They have shown a commitment to players who want to start careers now, which means that all future updates (and there will be many) will be non-breaking. That's very heartening to know, and is indicative of a game that has reached a late stage of maturity 

[John FX]

It would be nice to have a single statement of current plans for the near future though. Planned features, what current features will have their placeholders worked on to become the final product we were told they would be and so forth. Would stop speculation and provide a roadmap.

On another note though, it is now MONTHS after we were initially told 1.1 would drop (before christmas), it would be nice to have some more solid info on what is happening as far as moving toward a release date...

SOON^tm is becoming invalid after such an amount of time...

Edited February 26, 2016 by John FX

[Sir_Robert]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

It would be nice to have a single statement of current plans for the near future though. Planned features, what current features will have their placeholders worked on to become the final product we were told they would be and so forth. Would stop speculation and provide a roadmap.

On another note though, it is now MONTHS after we were initially told 1.1 would drop (before christmas), it would be nice to have some more solid info on what is happening as far as moving toward a release date...

SOON^tm is becoming invalid after such an amount of time...

That's the whole thing. If they give us such a map, people will only start complaining that it's taking to long.

If they tell us they want to do X, and then when they start working on X, find out that X is actually really boring, the only thing that will come of it is people complaining that 'they lied to us'

[eddiew]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

SOON^tm is becoming invalid after such an amount of time...

I suggest we move to WHEN IT'S READY^TM 

[John FX]

2 hours ago, Sir_Robert said:

That's the whole thing. If they give us such a map, people will only start complaining that it's taking to long.

If they tell us they want to do X, and then when they start working on X, find out that X is actually really boring, the only thing that will come of it is people complaining that 'they lied to us'

Maybe that process could be cut short to `They tell us they want to do X, we all complain that would be boring and to do Y instead, they do Y`

 

I know, I live in cloud cuckoo land.

[Sir_Robert]

1 hour ago, John FX said:

Maybe that process could be cut short to `They tell us they want to do X, we all complain that would be boring and to do Y instead, they do Y`

 

I know, I live in cloud cuckoo land.

Well the first 2 steps do happen. All the time. Everywhere

[John FX]

Just now, Sir_Robert said:

Well the first 2 steps do happen. All the time. Everywhere

It`s that last step where everything falls down mostly.

[regex]

5 hours ago, John FX said:

It would be nice to have a single statement of current plans for the near future though. Planned features, what current features will have their placeholders worked on to become the final product we were told they would be and so forth. Would stop speculation and provide a roadmap.

I asked them for a roadmap a long time ago.  The response was basically a resounding "NO".  Squad is not interested in provided us with future plans because they are scared of community reaction if they have to change something.

Fortunately the dev notes have improved dramatically since Max left and I no longer want or need to drag out the pitchfork every damn week.

Edited February 26, 2016 by regex

[KamikazeF0X]

Dev notes are not visible enough ... I will love to see much more activity on the Dev Blog (You know, the right panel in the forum homepage, the thing updated every month)

[John FX]

Just now, regex said:

I asked them for a roadmap a long time ago.  The response was basically a resounding "NO".  Squad is not interested in provided us with future plans because they are scared of community reaction if they have to change something.

Fortunately the dev notes have improved dramatically since Max left and I no longer want or need to drag out the pitchfork every damn week.

I must agree the devnotes are loads better. I can`t agree with squad that no roadmap is better, the game is now released and out of early access and there is a moral case for letting the people who have paid good money for a game not in early access know what it is they have bought, or at least the intentions for the game they have bought.

I know 1.0 means nothing these days but going from early access to release does still mean something as far as I know. To still be going "Teehee, we have plans but we are not telling you them" seems like a hangover from early access that should be reconsidered.

They key to not having a bad reaction from changing something is to be sure of what you have planned before you say it will happen and then make happen what you have said. Not to avoid giving us an idea of where the game is heading.

We were told we would have resources and we have them. Not before they were dropped and then changed though, we don`t have the insanely complex version initially mentioned and that`s a good thing IMHO. We were told 64 bit was being looked at, it was and found bad so it was put on hold but now with U5 we will have it.

The community can handle things not happening or being delayed and in my experience does not react that badly to it, we really hate being treated like mushrooms though...

 

Thanks for the reply

[Sir_Robert]

They know what they bought. This game, the one they have right now is what they bought. Everything else is bonus that you may get some day.

Do you always do everything you plan to make 2 years in advance? Because that's what you're asking here. Squad is telling us everything they will definitely do. And the only thing they will definitely do right now is make 1.1

After that comes out, they'll go plan out what comes next

[Djolox]

On 2/26/2016 at 0:56 PM, eddiew said:

My 2p would be that Unity 5, performance improvements, and working 64 bit is the real "out of beta". What we have right now still feels like early access. But we love it anyway 

That said, the latest dev notes have shown that Squad are planning to keep save files compatible - this is a "big deal"^TM and means that they are taking 1.0 very seriously as the launch version. They have shown a commitment to players who want to start careers now, which means that all future updates (and there will be many) will be non-breaking. That's very heartening to know, and is indicative of a game that has reached a late stage of maturity 

What I really love about Squad is that they care about the community, Instead of forgetting them and trying to complete their goal. Squad devs are the most community-caring devs! 

[Claw]

If you've been reading the devnotes, you'll see that there is discussion in there about where things are headed. The devnotes will likely not give you a full "road map," but it will give you a sense of what's going on.

If you've read them long enough, you'll also see that there's an underlying cycle to how they progress (regardless of what format they take). The inherent issue is that with each release, the initial devnotes get filled up with all the great stuff that's planned for a particular release. Over time, the juicy details start coming out. Eventually though, it gets to the point where the introduction of new elements into a release stops to focus on the necessary bug fixing before it can go on to QA and experimentals. The devnotes start getting thin on "what's all the fun new stuff" and gets down to "here's all the bugs we're attacking and the side things being implemented." People get antsy about what's going on, but quite frankly bug fixing, balancing, and tweaking isn't particularly exciting to talk about for weeks on end. And that's about where we are in the cycle right now.

 

On 2/24/2016 at 10:37 AM, Robje said:

Or are you just de-bugging, balancing and optimising as of now?

Yes, and some new things have already been announced such as the multiplayer, probe telemetry, and KSPedia (all of which I will probably get nitpicked for saying.) Also, as much as I've stressed it when I was a moderator, not every feature is going to be universally excitable to everyone. The Space Plane Plus incorporation was a huge one, but there were plenty of people who didn't care because they thought the rockets needed some love first. I'd rather not get into a debate in here about what updates are the most important because it involves a lot of people's personal opinions, which are all valid, but don't always coincide. But I did want to point out that new stuff is coming down the pipe and (as was stated when 1.0 came out) development continues.

[Glaran K'erman]

As always @Claw, well said.

[Renegrade]

On 2016-02-26 at 7:05 AM, John FX said:

On another note though, it is now MONTHS after we were initially told 1.1 would drop (before christmas), it would be nice to have some more solid info on what is happening as far as moving toward a release date...

SOON^tm is becoming invalid after such an amount of time...

What?  How could Soon™ ever be invalid?   It means, and I quote the Squad Concise Dictionary:

Soon™ - adverb - meaning sometime in the future, somewhere between "why the hell did this take so long?" and "never".

Since we haven't reached "never" yet, I'd definitely say it's still valid.  The full version of the dictionary goes on with extended definitions indicating that Soon™ could very well fall long after "I'm too old to click a mouse anymore", and gives some examples, including: "Soon™ after the Egyptians finished the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Americans landed on the Moon" and "Soon™ after the Big Bang, the universe died due to entropy".

TL;DR: I've long ago given up hope of timely releases, and embraced the eternity that is Soon™.

[Robje]

6 hours ago, Claw said:

If you've been reading the devnotes, you'll see that there is discussion in there about where things are headed. The devnotes will likely not give you a full "road map," but it will give you a sense of what's going on.

If you've read them long enough, you'll also see that there's an underlying cycle to how they progress (regardless of what format they take). The inherent issue is that with each release, the initial devnotes get filled up with all the great stuff that's planned for a particular release. Over time, the juicy details start coming out. Eventually though, it gets to the point where the introduction of new elements into a release stops to focus on the necessary bug fixing before it can go on to QA and experimentals. The devnotes start getting thin on "what's all the fun new stuff" and gets down to "here's all the bugs we're attacking and the side things being implemented." People get antsy about what's going on, but quite frankly bug fixing, balancing, and tweaking isn't particularly exciting to talk about for weeks on end. And that's about where we are in the cycle right now.

 

Yes, and some new things have already been announced such as the multiplayer, probe telemetry, and KSPedia (all of which I will probably get nitpicked for saying.) Also, as much as I've stressed it when I was a moderator, not every feature is going to be universally excitable to everyone. The Space Plane Plus incorporation was a huge one, but there were plenty of people who didn't care because they thought the rockets needed some love first. I'd rather not get into a debate in here about what updates are the most important because it involves a lot of people's personal opinions, which are all valid, but don't always coincide. But I did want to point out that new stuff is coming down the pipe and (as was stated when 1.0 came out) development continues.

Thank you:)

[Jim DiGriz]

Software development roadmaps are like weather prediction.  You don't ask weatherman for predictions of what the weather is going to look like 2 years out, and you shouldn't really ask software developers either.

What makes sense is to ask what they're working on now (the 1.1 stuff they've been highly transparent about).  And how far along they are in it and what they're currently working on (the devnotes are excellent and highly transparent here). 

Asking for anything else is practically like asking them to knowingly lie to you.

Claiming that there is a "moral case" that you need to be shown their roadmap is evidence that they should never under any circumstances show you their roadmap, because you're obviously going to interpret the roadmap as a promise and not as a guess about the future that may be scrapped any time someone comes up with a better idea and/or something that seemed simple turns out to be an epic never ending yak shave.

Software development does NOT look like this:

 

It often looks more like this:

[CaLVin-K]

On February 26, 2016 at 5:05 AM, John FX said:

It would be nice to have a single statement of current plans for the near future though. Planned features, what current features will have their placeholders worked on to become the final product we were told they would be and so forth. Would stop speculation and provide a roadmap.

On another note though, it is now MONTHS after we were initially told 1.1 would drop (before christmas), it would be nice to have some more solid info on what is happening as far as moving toward a release date...

SOON^tm is becoming invalid after such an amount of time...

IMHO SOON ^tm is not an invalid amount of time, the cool thing about KSP is that every week the devs tell us what they are up too and it seems like they are spending their time wisely, the unity five update took longer than expected. So what? They commited to finishing it and they are unwilling to release a seriously broken product post 1.0.