The Grand KSP 1.1 Discussion Thread

[The_Rocketeer]

 

5 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Right now, fix the damn bugs.

The question was what else besides what they're doing right now do you want them to do.

 

9 minutes ago, tater said:

As for vacations, again, had 1.1 been an open pre-release, then they get more free testing. The bandwidth issue with constant updates doesn't apply, because no updates. "Here's 1.1 prerelease, beat it up a few weeks, and when we return we'll squash the bugs you found!" I'dve been fine with that.

Ok, I see what you're saying. But the facts are, it wasn't an open pre-release, it was a release, probably one that was set in stone by marketing or head office or someone not attached in any direct way to the dev team who simply said 'get it out on this day'. Those guys don't think so much about bugfixes, they think about press releases and sales.

Probably later someone came along and said 'guys we realise the release crunch sucks but it seems pretty inevitable, so how do u feel about a 3-week vacation just after release?' And you know what, the dev team probably said that sounded pretty awesome, and frankly who can blame them?

Once again, for the third and final time, what exactly is it that you want them to do that they aren't doing already? Squad is new to this process, KSP is a unique project for them and a new business experience. Their approach to updates isn't the industry standard (Come to that, nor is their product, thank kraken!). Why is it that so many of it's fans do such an amazing job at forgetting that this is an indie game?

Edited May 27, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[steve_v]

14 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

what else besides what they're doing right now

How about:

21 minutes ago, steve_v said:

not make grandiose promises and commit to unrealistic release schedules.

They've been doing this with every release since KSP went live on steam...

The thing they are not doing right now? Avoid doing this:

14 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

marketing or head office or someone not attached in any direct way to the dev team who simply said 'get it out on this day'.

Yes, it's now too late to fix the 1.1 release... It's not too late to stop doing this every damn release, and that is something that can be done right now.

Edited May 27, 2016 by steve_v
too many .1

[tater]

Before 1.0, every update was "prerelease," the game was early access.

They've arbitrarily set themselves up for a different level of critique by labeling 1.0 "release." We might all know here int he forums that there was zero QA difference between 0.90 and 1.whatever, but new customers, or people not on the forums do not. They can call a version whatever they want, but words mean something, and "release" has a different connotation than "alpha," "beta," or "pre-release candidate."

 

[The_Rocketeer]

I'm not sure which 'grandiose promises' you are referring to, but by now it seems to me that release schedules for KSP, if such exist, are generally pretty arbitrary. Whatever I think of that fact, it's still a fact situation, it is what it is. Since Squad haven't changed it, perhaps it suits them the way it is for reasons (I'm no expert, but I can imagine contractual obligations to distributors being one such reason). However bad it is, it clearly isn't bad enough to cause you (and others) to disassociate yourself from the game (if it was, you wouldn't be posting here) - that being the case it doesn't seem like there's a commercial incentive for Squad to do anything about it either.

Either way, it's really not my place or intention to defend Squad's choices up to this point, or those for the future, but the number of whiney 1.1-bug-related posts going on around this forum give a pretty sorry impression of how much the dev team's efforts are appreciated, and as I've pointed out the state of the game at release was probably not in their own hands alone, and the necessary fixes have already been promised and are in development right now. So, in short, there's really no reason to go on complaining about how buggy the release was anymore.

That being said, if you (or anybody) want/s to write a letter (open or private) to Squad offering them free business advice for future releases, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't. However, I also don't think that sort of feedback properly belongs here in this thread. The point about the bugs has been made, and fair enough, but the point about release schedules and business/development strategy is a separate issue that really needs its own platform.

Edited May 27, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[tater]

The "whiny" posts are because many people were left with something that needed a quick patch, but it was dropped before a 3 week hiatus.

We're going to Italy in a couple weeks, and my wife won't be taking anyone to the operating room right before we leave, because it would not be fair to her partners to leave with people that might have complications in the hospital. Dropping an update, then leaving town is analogous to this, IMO.

The time to take a vacation is not the day after dropping a basically untested update, a better time would be in the middle of a dev cycle when the extant game is working decently well.

<EDIT> I don't begrudge anyone a vacation, but 3 weeks... LOL, we haven't had a 3 week vacation in decades.

Edited May 27, 2016 by tater

[The_Rocketeer]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

The "whiny" posts are because many people were left with something that needed a quick patch, but it was dropped before a 3 week hiatus.

We're going to Italy in a couple weeks, and my wife won't be taking anyone to the operating room right before we leave, because it would not be fair to her partners to leave with people that might have complications in the hospital. Dropping an update, then leaving town is analogous to this, IMO.

The time to take a vacation is not the day after dropping a basically untested update, a better time would be in the middle of a dev cycle when the extant game is working decently well.

I think it's pretty hyperbolic to suggest there's any kind of parity between potentially life-threatening surgery and a videogame release (OT I know, but FWIW, my wife is a nurse in the NHS (UK) who gets dumped with doctors pulling this exact kinda baloney all the fracking time).

On this point, I still don't think you've made a reasonable request of the dev team that would move this discussion forward. Mostly it just seems like a bunch of you've found an axe to grind, and by golly you're going to grind it.

Edit: also it seems that the problems with wheels/landing gears are rather more complex than could be solved with 'a quick patch'. I understand why this frustrates you, but I can only reply by repeating what I've already said - holidays were fixed, decision was made, right or wrong that's it. Move on.

Edited May 27, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[tater]

I posted a bug report on the bug tracker---which post pre-release is pretty hard to actually find, what else can I do that is useful? This forum is for chatting, the bug tracker is where the meat is.

I think it's analogous, because her leaving would be annoying to her partners, they'd get stuck with annoying calls from the floor at 3 am. I'm not considering the patient at all, lol. The partners are the KSP players in this analogy.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2016 by tater

[The_Rocketeer]

30 minutes ago, tater said:

I posted a bug report on the bug tracker---which post pre-release is pretty hard to actually find, what else can I do that is useful? This forum is for chatting, the bug tracker is where the meat is.

I think it's analogous, because her leaving would be annoying to her partners, they'd get stuck with annoying calls from the floor at 3 am. I'm not considering the patient at all, lol. The partners are the KSP players in this analogy.

I'm not criticising you for posting your complaints per se, but having posted them I'm not sure why you and so many others feel the need to go on posting them so prolifically. I wasn't happy with some of the bugs I've encountered either, but I installed mods to fix the ones I could and tried to make the best of a bad job. If you prefer not to play til it's fixed, that's your choice.

Yes, I had understood this. Besides the hyperbole, the partners analogy still doesn't really stand up anyway. KSP players are not partners who share responsibility for the game. We the players can choose not to participate at all, at any time. If KSP is so ruined that Squad goes bankrupt, we aren't liable for anything beyond the purchase price that we paid to buy the game (which in £/hours of game time is already by VERY far the best value-for-money videogame experience I and many many others have ever bought).

Let me put it like this. Squad made a product, sold it on the basis that it would be frequently altered and updated, and then they changed it a bit with the aim of long-term improvement that made it short-term worse. I don't like it being worse, but like I said I can make the best of it, or like you I can decide to put the game aside for a while and wait it out. Either way, we can both now take great comfort in knowing that people are already working on making it better than ever.

Edited May 27, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[sormi]

52 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

I'm not criticising you for posting your complaints per se, but having posted them I'm not sure why you and so many others feel the need to go on posting them so prolifically. I wasn't happy with some of the bugs I've encountered either, but I installed mods to fix the ones I could and tried to make the best of a bad job. If you prefer not to play til it's fixed, that's your choice.

Yes, I had understood this. Besides the hyperbole, the partners analogy still doesn't really stand up anyway. KSP players are not partners who share responsibility for the game. We the players can choose not to participate at all, at any time. If KSP is so ruined that Squad goes bankrupt, we aren't liable for anything beyond the purchase price that we paid to buy the game (which in £/hours of game time is already by VERY far the best value-for-money videogame experience I and many many others have ever bought).

Let me put it like this. Squad made a product, sold it on the basis that it would be frequently altered and updated, and then they changed it a bit with the aim of long-term improvement that made it short-term worse. I don't like it being worse, but like I said I can make the best of it, or like you I can decide to put the game aside for a while and wait it out. Either way, we can both now take great comfort in knowing that people are already working on making it better than ever.

Imagine you had just bought this game a few days ago. You don't know anything about the game before you installed it and encounter the gamebreaking bugs that are at hand atm. Someone saying he had the very best £/hours of game time of value wouldn't comfort one at all. I'm baffled someone even brings this up, someone might have 1k hours from early access and it doesn't mean a thing when the game is fully released. Infact, if you're anything like me you'd be avoiding early access titles like a plague exactly to prevent things like this happening.

As for vacations. Personally I think every member of the development team has deserved it. This game is a masterpiece when it works, but you do have to have a contingency plan for stuff like this.

Edited May 27, 2016 by sormi

[The_Rocketeer]

22 minutes ago, sormi said:

Imagine you had just bought this game a few days ago. You don't know anything about the game before you installed it and encounter the gamebreaking bugs that are at hand atm. Someone saying he had the very best £/hours of game time of value wouldn't comfort one at all. I'm baffled someone even brings this up, someone might have 1k hours from early access and it doesn't mean a thing when the game is fully released. Infact, if you're anything like me you'd be avoiding early access titles like a plague exactly to prevent things like this happening.

You're absolutely right about new players, and I clearly wasn't trying to speak for all players. I do think, tho, that @tater falls into the demographic I am reaching out to when I point out the amount of time and enjoyment that many of us have already derived from the game, early access or otherwise. It was only an aside, but I was generally aiming to remind him and others that KSP is not a bad game that never works, it's an exceptional game that broadly speaking works extremely well most of the time. This may be a low point, but it won't last forever. Very often people pay a lot more for a lot less.

Edit: I could draw a comparison with another game that I in fact did buy while it was full of gamebreaking bugs at a time when it looked like development had ground to a halt - Spintires. Despite the bugs and a (then) pretty awful interface, it was still a very interesting and enjoyable game - one that has now shaken off its development difficulties, is presently expecting an expansive patch, and I would say (at the bargain price I bought it) is probably a not-too-distant runner up to KSP for satisfaction per investment AFAIC.

Edited May 27, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Enceos]

@steve_v Most people just don't understand what it means developing a game on a foreign engine. Unity developers have never imagined that something as grand as KSP will emerge from their engine which was meant for simple indie games.

Here's a good post by taniwha which gives good insight into what KSP really is:

 

[tater]

I've gotten more than enough value out of this title, and I've said before I would pay for an update, happily.

I keep posting because people keep commenting/replying to the point I made. I honestly want the game to be as successful/remunerative as possible, and I think that production releases like 1.1 are counterproductive when they come with game-breaking or very frustrating flaws---counterproductive for Squad, not me. I suppose I should just not post, as others have said the same things---with the same goal of making sure Squad released the best possible product so that they could be successful---about previous releases (notably 1.0), and Squad doesn't seem to care.

Edited May 27, 2016 by tater

[The_Rocketeer]

@tater I hope that a year from now you'll look back on the incredible new stuff the devs have delivered and feel that a few weeks with a few broken parts wasn't too costly a sacrifice. Upgrading to Unity 5 is a massive overhaul for KSP that delivers little of itself but makes many other things possible, not to mention opening up KSP to the console market, which whatever u or I might think of it, can only be good for sales, good for Squad, good for KSP and therefore good for us. Yes the update broke  things, yes it was inconvenient to have the devs on holiday right after a buggy release, but considering how big this upgrade was I think it's proportionate that they got some down time before diving in up to their necks to clean up this mess. Give the devs time to take advantage of the new assets the upgrade gives them and I really believe you'll see worthwhile results.

[tater]

I guarantee being a surgeon is more stressful than developing a game, and since my wife got out of med school we've never had more than a week off at a time. Just a reality check, no Unity problem results in a meaningfully bad outcome for anyone playing the game (we're all alive to complain  ). Had they been gone a week (or in a staggered fashion) there would be fewer unanswered complaints here I bet.

I've never had a problem with the unity upgrade process, I expected it to be buggy, but I still think that the simple solution was to give the release a different name---pre-release. Done. Pre-releases can be really buggy, no foul.

I love the game, I just think that bad releases give the devs a black eye they don't need, I'd hope that the semantic argument is actually constructive... call updates likely to be really buggy tests, or pre-release, or something so people know what to expect.

Edited May 27, 2016 by tater

[sormi]

3 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

@tater I hope that a year from now you'll look back on the incredible new stuff the devs have delivered and feel that a few weeks with a few broken parts wasn't too costly a sacrifice. Upgrading to Unity 5 is a massive overhaul for KSP that delivers little of itself but makes many other things possible, not to mention opening up KSP to the console market, which whatever u or I might think of it, can only be good for sales, good for Squad, good for KSP and therefore good for us. Yes the update broke  things, yes it was inconvenient to have the devs on holiday right after a buggy release, but considering how big this upgrade was I think it's proportionate that they got some down time before diving in up to their necks to clean up this mess. Give the devs time to take advantage of the new assets the upgrade gives them and I really believe you'll see worthwhile results.

I'm not sure you realize what's going on right now. Game is literally unplayable for most of us "whining" on the forums. There's no excuse to break the game just to allocate more resources on a PS port while ignoring the issues of the original game. Ffs, if you can't make a working version of the original PC release, why bother with a console port at all.

Edited May 27, 2016 by sormi

[Padishar]

1 hour ago, sormi said:

I'm not sure you realize what's going on right now.

I'm absolutely certain he realises what's going on because I've read lots of his other recent posts which make that fact quite clear.  As for the rest of your post, do you really think that such a non-constructive, inaccurate, rant is going to have any positive effect on the situation?

[sormi]

17 minutes ago, Padishar said:

I'm absolutely certain he realises what's going on because I've read lots of his other recent posts which make that fact quite clear.  As for the rest of your post, do you really think that such a non-constructive, inaccurate, rant is going to have any positive effect on the situation?

I'm sorry it kind of turned into a rant on my part and I prolly should've read the 47 pages of this topic before commenting.

Thing is, like people have commented before, is there something a regular player is ought to do besides submitting crash reports? I did participate in the 1.1 prelease, I did report bugs I encountered and I did actively follow the tracker. I feel like there is a certain threshold of hours spent on debugging a "released game" before giving up in frustration. Because in the end of the day if the process continues like this I'm actively testing, debugging and bug reporting a product they released an year ago. Why isn't this an early access title if the developers are treating it as such?

Yeah, this turned into kind of a rant again but that should be understandable when people's expectations are so high as they are.

Edited May 27, 2016 by sormi

[Andem]

18 minutes ago, sormi said:

Yeah, this turned into kind of a rant again but that should be understandable when people's expectations are so high as they are.

And if I might add, it's an expectation that SQAUD created themselves when they declared it out of early access. As far as I'm concerned, it may as well be version 0.1.1.2, because they are treating it the same way they treated it before the 1.0 release. You may say that I have no right to pass judgements about the pre-1.0 releases, because all I played before then was the demo, but if the horror stories were bad enough to reach outside of the immediate community, there might be something that needs to change.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Andem

[Padishar]

45 minutes ago, Andem said:

You may say that

No, I certainly wouldn't say that but I would say that the release of 1.1.2 was 4 weeks ago now, the devs have been back for a few days and are working on the problems and continued, non-constructive, whining isn't going to accomplish anything (except for stirring up ill feeling) so you may as well save the wear and tear on your keyboard.

45 minutes ago, Andem said:

there might be something that needs to change.

There are certainly things that need to change and you would be mistaken if you think that Squad aren't well aware of it.  If you aren't going to, at least, suggest what those things might be then, again, I suggest you simply save the wear on your keyboard.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Padishar

[Andem]

7 minutes ago, Padishar said:

No, I certainly wouldn't say that but I would say that the release of 1.1.2 was 4 weeks ago now, the devs have been back for a few days and are working on the problems and continued, non-constructive, whining isn't going to accomplish anything (except for stirring up ill feeling) so you may as well save the wear and tear on your keyboard.

There are certainly things that need to change and you would be mistaken if you think that Squad aren't well aware of it.  If you aren't going to, at least, suggest what those things might be then, again, I suggest you simply save the wear on your keyboard.

Maybe we would be able to expand upon ideas more if we didn't have to keep defending ourselves from attacks on our goddamn opinions! But instead, we get attacked with condescending responses before we can actually articulate a proper response. No "first reaction" is going to be articulate enough to truly convey the posters meaning. Shooting them down with a barrage of pointless, non constructive, equally inarticulate responses still does nothing but keep dredging up ill feeling! So, from here on out, can all of us slow down a little before moderation needs to occur? Now give me a minute while I draft up a list of some things I would change to make updates smoother, playable for everyone, and less of a cluster[redacted].

[Andem]

Here's a few suggestions:

1. Alert the community to major outstanding bugs that have been ignored for other reasons, and
2. Give an explanation as to why those bugs have been ignored.
3. Listen to pre-release testers beyond just "Thanks for finding x bug!" Make sure most of them would cnsder the game release worthy. Nothing big, just a quick survey they have to complete whenever they file a bug report.
4. Prereleases - Focus on features. Releases - Focus on the bugs those features create. It doesn't matter how long you call it a prerelease, but a releas should have all of the ajor bugs ironed out or at least acknowledged.

[The_Rocketeer]

It hasn't been my intention to condescend, and I think @Padishar is also probably only trying to offer good advice. There's a philosophy called stoicism which is all about meeting the unforeseen, both good and bad, with equal calm and neutrality. For the time being, I think that allowing disappointment with the current state of the released game (which at the end of the day is the same release with mostly the same problems (Linux users excepted) for all of us) to translate into 'keys of fury' isn't likely to yield anything that a little patience and calm wouldn't yield anyway.

Indeed, the best and really only possible thing you can do that -might- yield better results, is to express your personal experiences directly to Squad and the devs in as calm and accurate way as you can, be that through bug reports for experiences of the game itself, or by writing a letter to the company controllers expressing your experiences as a customer. Making a lot of smoke and noise on the forums is just a way to make smoke and noise on the forums.

[m4v]

On 28/5/2016 at 9:46 PM, Padishar said:

There are certainly things that need to change and you would be mistaken if you think that Squad aren't well aware of it.  If you aren't going to, at least, suggest what those things might be then, again, I suggest you simply save the wear on your keyboard.

Change isn't going to come if we all stay quiet and nice, Squad being aware of the issue doesn't mean that they will do something about it.

[pandaman]

2 hours ago, m4v said:

Change isn't going to come if we all stay quiet and nice, Squad being aware of the issue doesn't mean that they will do something about it.

Whilst this is naturally true, sometimes the reasons for 'not doing anything about it' are out of squads direct control (Unity issues etc) or often just plain difficult to fix for various other reasons.  We don't work there so are, quite rightly, not aware of the details of anything unless they choose to share it with us.  Yes, in hindsight, they do appear to have made some 'errors of judgement', but we were not privy to the circumstances, choices, discussions and all the reasons that led to those particular decisions being made so maybe what we have is what they saw as the best compromise given the options available.  Sometimes you have to choose between several bad options because a good one just isn't available.

It's not a case of 'staying quiet and Nice' and not making them aware of issues, it's a case of being sensible and as helpful as possible when we do point stuff out.

It's maybe not the best analogy, but if two children want something from you and one just whines and whinges constantly, but the other asks politely and listens to explanations why they can't have it 'right now' I know which one I am most likely to listen to and be prepared to help.

[m4v]

36 minutes ago, pandaman said:

Whilst this is naturally true, sometimes the reasons for 'not doing anything about it' are out of squads direct control (Unity issues etc) or often just plain difficult to fix for various other reasons. We don't work there so are, quite rightly, not aware of the details of anything unless they choose to share it with us.

Squad has no control of Unity but certainly it has control of when to release and with which version of Unity, shifting the blame to Unity is asinine.

41 minutes ago, pandaman said:

 Yes, in hindsight, they do appear to have made some 'errors of judgement', but we were not privy to the circumstances, choices, discussions and all the reasons that led to those particular decisions being made so maybe what we have is what they saw as the best compromise given the options available. Sometimes you have to choose between several bad options because a good one just isn't available.

That's a false dilemma, the good option was to not release and keep the pre-release branch open.

44 minutes ago, pandaman said:

It's not a case of 'staying quiet and Nice' and not making them aware of issues, it's a case of being sensible and as helpful as possible when we do point stuff out.

We were sensible and helpful during the pre-release, see how Squad cared about it, if their bottom line isn't hurt then they won't do anything.