Doom posting

[DChurchill]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

No, you're correct.  KSP is behind a minor version or two and Squad is waiting on Unity to provide wheel implementation fixes.  Not sure about anything else though.

That's what I thought. Which most likely means that many of these issues will remain until that happens.

Edited June 6, 2016 by DChurchill

[Superfluous J]

I've had 3 very large games with many ships spread across the system, and all 3 of them I had to abandon due to frequent crashes.

If I recall, the most recent of those games was in 0.90.

[The_Rocketeer]

53 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

I have one from .21 or earlier- no problems here.

I find this hard to believe, unless it's basically empty. There have been numerous parts overhauls and removals since then. Even if craft have simply disappeared, that would be a problem in my book.

[ZooNamedGames]

7 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

I find this hard to believe, unless it's basically empty. There have been numerous parts overhauls and removals since then. Even if craft have simply disappeared, that would be a problem in my book.

Actually it's FULL of junk, between unfinished missions, a few stations and like nearly 1000 pieces of debris. Last I checked I had nearly 40 "flights", and that's just what the game counts as "operable", which isn't including dead satellites or anything else. So I reiterate, it doesn't crash for me much at all (and I use mods).

As to the part overhauls, nothing has been removed with the exception of the mk3 parts (which I never used anyway), they've simply changed the appearance so crafts will look different but function the same. Not that it matters since again, most of those crafts haven't been used in ages so their function has lost it's luster.

[Mjarf]

I'll take a slightly unstable KSP over a bug-free cowadoody any day.

[CloudlessEchoes]

6 hours ago, DChurchill said:

So what is it you want to happen?

I'd like to know too. All that is going to happen due to bugs/stability/whatever is already happening, because they've been reported and are being worked on. The reason to keep harping on about it is a mystery to me. I'm surprised all the polls/redundant complaint threads aren't nuked immediately.

If you don't like the way 1.1.2 works, then you have two choices: use a previous version, or wait.

Edited June 6, 2016 by CloudlessEchoes

[Tourist]

5 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Not gonna argue with your figures, but you do have to take into account that people are less likely to take to the forums/complain/look at/vote in polls about bugs when everything is working ok.

I don't really have a point, just pointing out human nature I guess.

I'd add it only reflects those who participate in the forums. It is by no means an accurate reflection of the entire player bases experience. I'd assume (although without figures to back it up) there are many more players who have never visited the forums, let alone posted here, then there are players that engage in the forum. This means the poll doesn't really tell us how may KSP players totally are experiencing problems.

Also you can't even really extrapolate the total player experience from percentages involved in the forums because  there are tendencies and natural biases that will exist. For instance, forum users are probably more engaged with the game than non form users... that doesn't mean they play it more, or derive greater enjoyment from it, rather they have a greater interest in the game beyond playing, such as sharing craft, discussing problems, taking about missions, debating development choices, asking devs questions etc. This could lead to a tendency or a bias for forum uses, which may manifest in things like an inclination to be more/less willing to complain about problems than other users, or to feel the problems they find are more/less severe than other uses. Other biases may be cause by forum users more/less "tech savvy"... are they more likely to be people to have knowledge, interest, and opinions about what is "under the hood" or "behind the curtain". This will lead to a tendency in voting patterns, in the same way that a lawyer on a jury would (and why in many countries lawyers are exempt, or at very least challenged by both sides.)

TLDR forum polls are not really accurate anyway.  

[HebaruSan]

14 minutes ago, CloudlessEchoes said:

6 hours ago, DChurchill said:

So what is it you want to happen?

I'd like to know too.

My hope would be for the announcement of a policy that going forward, all known critical/crash bugs must be fixed before a pre-release version is shipped as a full release (there are still at least 2 known CTD-on-launch issues on Linux, plus another problem where the game window resizes itself at launch to unplayable dimensions like 1000x1 pixels). I took this for granted as development common sense and was kind of shocked when 1.1 rolled out regardless.

Of course, the pre-release for 1.1 is now long over; it shipped before it was ready, but it can't be un-shipped. All anyone can do now is hope that future versions are better, and part of that is providing polite but still negative feedback so SQUAD has a sense of the experience players are having. And yes, even redundantly; if a thousand people experience a serious problem, it's misleading to the developer if 999 of them stay silent because the first one has already complained. @Snark would surely not count his software as well-engineered simply because magically no one talked about the problems it had.

tl;dr: Ship a crashy release, expect complaints; they're the canary in the coal mine of your product.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

FYI in another thread we've been talking about solutions and its seems that TOTAL UNINSTALL and REINSTALL may be a thing.

 

[SorryDave]

A quote from the last dev note: "Everyone has dove into fixing bugs for patch 1.1.3 and improving on our processes based on the lessons we learned with KSP 1.1. The 1.1.3 patch will be focused on reworking a few systems and fixing a large number of critical bugs that the community found and reported to us, amongst other things we’re working on crashes in the VAB and SPH, and the orbits calculations."

I've had a few bugs cause me to have to restart the game since using 1.1. I play with a few mods like EVE, KAC, and KER. I play in 64bit mode on a decent 1-2 year old lap top.

I play this game a lot and probably will be for several more years as long as SQUAD keeps improving the game, fixing bugs, and spending time improving the development process as they gain new experience.

Edited June 7, 2016 by SorryDave

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

1 minute ago, SorryDave said:

A quote from the last dev note: "Everyone has dove into fixing bugs for patch 1.1.3 and improving on our processes based on the lessons we learned with KSP 1.1. The 1.1.3 patch will be focused on reworking a few systems and fixing a large number of critical bugs that the community found and reported to us, amongst other things we’re working on crashes in the VAB and SPH, and the orbits calculations."

 

Thank you (happy dance) 

[pandaman]

14 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

FYI in another thread we've been talking about solutions and its seems that TOTAL UNINSTALL and REINSTALL may be a thing.

 

This could possibly explain my lack of crashes, as I always do a fresh download for each release, that and I don't use many mods.  I just copy in my saves from the previous version and I'm good to go.

Edited June 7, 2016 by pandaman
sloppy spelling now corrected

[Snark]

Goodness, step away for a day and the thread just takes off like a... um... hmm, having trouble thinking of a good metaphor. 

Anyway, there have been a few responses and mentions of my lengthy rant yesterday, just wanted to address.

In the context of "this is my impression of what people seem to be saying," I said:

23 hours ago, Snark said:

• KSP 1.1+ is overflowing chock full of bugs.  So badly that it's broken / unplayable / not possible to enjoy.
• And it shouldn't be, and Squad has been derelict in their duty for shipping software with so many bugs in it.

...and apparently I was correct in that impression, because Brainlord responded:

22 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

THIS.

As a professional developer. THIS. 

Yes, bugs happen, but just don't ship it yet.

To which I have to respectfully disagree.  Not because I'm saying "you're wrong", but rather, "you don't have any valid basis for making such an assertion, because neither you nor I have enough information to make that judgment."

Delaying the ship date has a very big and real cost of making hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people have to wait a long time for their update-- not just for this version, but for pushing back the release of future versions.  We don't know the numbers, but it's plausible to suppose that most of those users are playing just fine and aren't significantly helped by a big delay in releasing.  (Certainly you're not in any position to say that that's not the case.)  And you don't have any numbers to show that the number and severity of bugs in the general population is big enough to make that tradeoff worthwhile.  So you're making an assertion that could be correct... but it could also very easily not be (my own guess is that it's not).

The point of my original post is not "don't complain about problems".  It's just that I wish people would say "I wish it hadn't been shipped" (which is a perfectly valid thing to say, since it's a statement of personal preference) instead of "Squad shouldn't have shipped" (which implies knowledge and competence to judge, which neither you nor I nor anyone else outside of Squad is in a position to say).

Lengthy rant in spoiler section about why I contend that we're not in a position to be able to say whether it was appropriate for Squad to have shipped.

Spoiler

You don't have the full picture.  Nor do I.  Certainly you can say "there are enough bugs that I don't like it, and I would rather have waited."  That's based on your personal experience with the game, so of course it's within your sphere of knowledge.

What you're not in any position to say is that "Squad shouldn't have shipped it."  Because you don't have enough information to say.  It may be that you would have fared better with a later release... but what about everyone else?

When shipping software:  everything is a tradeoff.  Everything comes with a cost.  Ship software with a bug in it?  Sure, that's bad.  Okay, you delay the release to fix the bug?  That's bad too, because now you're making everybody wait for the release.

It's a matter of picking the least-bad option.  You have to balance the cost of shipping with a bug against the cost of delaying the release.

Neither you nor I or anyone outside of Squad is in a position to say what those costs are.  The cost of delaying the release is at least a somewhat known quantity:  it's making N players wait for the game.  We don't know just how big a number that is, since Squad doesn't release that information, but let's say a million-- I'd wager it couldn't be a whole lot less than that.  So, make a million people wait an extra N weeks or months.  That's a pretty big deal.  That's a big cost.  There'd better be a big benefit to make it worth doing so.

And you don't know how big the benefit is.  You don't know how many people are actually affected by these bugs.  Suppose it turns out that 98% of the player base is doing just fine-- would you make 98% of players wait months of extra time to save problems for 2%?  Of course, seeing me casually toss out a number like 2% is going to make hackles rise-- the obvious rejoinder would be "that's ridiculous, Snark, you're just pulling a number out of your posterior that seems to support your argument."  And you'd be right-- I can't say that "2%" is accurate.  But you can't say that it isn't.  You just don't know.

For example, I think it's plausible that an awful lot of people complaining about "bugs" are actually getting caught by player error-- that's what a lot of the folks complaining about landing gear are doing, at least in the many posts I've seen on the topic.

It's also plausible that an awful lot of people getting caught by crashes are actually being done in by mods, which aren't Squad's responsibility.  I don't have any idea what fraction of players run mods... but I think it's plausible to suppose that the large majority don't use them.  To use a mod, you have to be fairly computer-savvy.  The overwhelming majority of KSP players are not on this forum, which means that their voices are never heard here, and you and I never hear from them-- but Squad has to take them into account.  (My basis for that assertion:  there are at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of KSP players.  Not even 1% that many people are here on the forums.)  The population here on the forums is a tiny sample of the overall KSP population-- and I'd wager that it's probably not a representative one.  I'd guess that the folks who post here are more likely to be the computer-savvy ones, the ones who are more likely to install mods, and who are therefore more likely to run into problems.  I'd also point out that happy people who aren't having problems generally don't have a reason to post, or to search for posts, which can mean that the unhappy-people-with-problems have a disproportionate voice here.

And there's also the fact that there are other tradeoffs, as well.  If Squad decides to push the big red shiny button and ship a product, even with known bug problems (including bugs not found yet)... they get an immediate bug-finding benefit from the gazillions of users.  Bugs will be found rapidly, which will make it easier to fix them rapidly.  If, on the other hand, they didn't push that button and had to rely on their tiny in-house QA staff for all of that... it would take a much longer time to find and narrow in on the same number of bugs.  So again, it comes down to a tradeoff.  Release, and have the cost of some users with bug pain... in exchange for a much compressed QA cycle, which allows fixing them faster, and allows future versions of KSP to be released much sooner.  Keeping it in-house avoids the bug pain for players, but could make for a much delayed release to try to hit the same quality bar.

So, it's a tradeoff.  It's far from obvious which is the right choice, even if you're Squad and have all the information.  For people like you and me, who don't have that information, then we're flying blind.  So... you may be right-- but you also very well may not.  And all I'm saying is, when you're not in a position to know whether you're right, perhaps it would be better not to level criticism at people who have more information than you do and used that information when making their decision.  And who don't have a crystal ball.

 

Next, this from Rocketeer:

23 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

@Snark not that I disagree with your whole post - much good advice - but the 'KSP Since 1.1' poll I conducted (which I think is the only one that directly tackled the 'how often are you experiencing bugs' question) actually only showed a very small majority (<55%) having 'infrequent' bug problems, and a very large minority (>35%) having frequent bug problems. To dismiss these complaints out of hand for lack of evidence, or even suggest that such evidence doesn't exist, is a bit unfair.

You're referring specifically to this poll that you started, which currently shows 53% saying "I'm playing 1.1.2 just fine" and 26% saying "I have frequent bugs affecting how I play, but I'm playing 1.1.2 anyway."

But there's also this other poll that you started, in which 69% of respondents (modded + unmodded) say "good classic kerbal fun" without significant bug problems.

And then there's this other poll that you started, in which 71% of respondents indicate that they're fine with 1.1.2 and would not rather that it had been kept from releasing.

And there's also this poll by Andem, in which 79% of respondents are either "very few crashes" or else not enough to bother them much.

And then there's the fact that none of this is scientific.  We're dealing with a tiny and self-selected sample of the KSP population.  We're only hearing from people who are tech-savvy enough to know about the forums, spend time reading them, perhaps be disproportionately likely to be running mods.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if people who have problems tend to be a lot more vocal than people who aren't, and much more likely to go looking for places to give feedback about it.  So even though the general trend of these polls is that the majority of KSPers are fine with the situation and are glad that 1.1.2 shipped... I wouldn't be surprised if the real numbers are a lot higher than that.

But there's little point in arguing about that, since neither you nor I have any way of finding what those numbers actually are.

16 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

And yes, even redundantly; if a thousand people experience a serious problem, it's misleading to the developer if 999 of them stay silent because the first one has already complained. @Snark would surely not count his software as well-engineered simply because magically no one talked about the problems it had.

tl;dr: Ship a crashy release, expect complaints; they're the canary in the coal mine of your product.

And if a thousand people experience a serious problem, and lots of them complain about it, and 900,000 people experience no problem at all and therefore never say anything or go onto a forum to mention that or even have any reason to go looking for a forum to post in... what then?  Do we make 900,000 people wait additional months for a product, because 1,000 people had problems?

It's all a tradeoff.  Yes, I've deliberately quoted numbers that skew the judgment in my favor, just as you deliberately quoted numbers that skew it in yours.  The point is, this is all just hand-waving without having actual numbers, which none of us have.  We're ignorant.  I'm just saying that I tend to look askance at criticism leveled from a position of having insufficient information to base that judgment on.

Yes, ship a crashy release and get complaints.  But you and I are in no position to say how crashy it really is.  And if they hadn't shipped, they'd also get complaints.

 

[Matuchkin]

On 06/06/2016 at 4:48 AM, steve_v said:

If you can explain how complaining about people complaining is more constructive that complaining in the first place, please, go ahead.
As for reporting bugs, I have. No dice, unless you count "Known Unity issue, no fix" replies as "constructive".

1. Complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining is CHEATING!

2. There is a difference between complaining and calming others. There is nothing wrong with what OP did.

[Gojira1000]

Arguing about anything in the absence of comprehensive data is counterproductive and ridiculous. You can make a judgement for yourself, but you can't make it for other people, nor do they have to accept - or even respect - your opinion.

Also, I think it's nap time, everyone is getting cranky.

 

[Sandworm]

17 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

1. Complaining about someone complaining about someone complaining is CHEATING!

2. There is a difference between complaining and calming others. There is nothing wrong with what OP did.

Every person here complaining about all the complaining is a person that isn't playing KSP atm.  That's a message to Squad, readers researching whether to buy the game and, most importantly, the all-seeing Google spider.  Posts here expressing frustration with the game, community, Squad or anything else are valid information for those deciding whether to purchase and/or recommend KSP.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

40 minutes ago, Snark said:

Lengthy rant in spoiler section about why I contend that we're not in a position to be able to say whether it was appropriate for Squad to have shipped.

wow. (that was a rant)

Do you not watch cable TV news? Pundits and other educated observers make assumptions and throw ideas around, that's all I was doing. Do I have to put IMHO in front of every sentence?

No developer should ever release any buggy app. If its buggy software, it shouldn't have shipped.  And I stand by that.

That said, of course I don't have access to their books, I don't know if Squad needed to pay the rent, or meet a quarterly dividend, or (my educated guess) if the QC dept is basically non-existent because up till now, we've all been a free QC dept. 

And THAT said, I do appear to have had a worse experience than the rest of you since 1.1.   (sorry if that made me disproportionately mad) 

EDIT: Wait, that sounds wrong: I AM actually sorry if I have been disproportionately mad.

Edited June 7, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[The_Rocketeer]

51 minutes ago, Snark said:

Next, this from Rocketeer:

You're referring specifically to this poll that you started, which currently shows 53% saying "I'm playing 1.1.2 just fine" and 26% saying "I have frequent bugs affecting how I play, but I'm playing 1.1.2 anyway."

But there's also this other poll that you started, in which 69% of respondents (modded + unmodded) say "good classic kerbal fun" without significant bug problems.

And then there's this other poll that you started, in which 71% of respondents indicate that they're fine with 1.1.2 and would not rather that it had been kept from releasing.

And there's also this poll by Andem, in which 79% of respondents are either "very few crashes" or else not enough to bother them much.

And then there's the fact that none of this is scientific.  We're dealing with a tiny and self-selected sample of the KSP population.

@Snark

• I started only 2 polls, they're sequentially the 1st and 3rd that you've linked. The 2nd is @p1t1o's.
• Neither of my polls asked about or offered the choice to have kept or not have kept 1.1.2 from release as an answer.
• You're playing a bit fast and loose with the wording of all the polls and their actual figures.

And this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that posts should be accurate and fair.

As for the science, well no, you're right, and it wasn't ever intended to be scientific. But it is still evidence, which is what you asked for. Since we are dealing with 'a tiny and self-selected sample', and since the polls (taken together) suggest of that sample *at least* 1-in-5 seem to be having regular problems, I think that pretty much screams evidence that bugs are a widespread and extensive issue. If you're not contending that point, I'm not sure why you're responding to what I said in this way.

Edited June 7, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Vanamonde]

As someone who has been on the forum 4 years, this is not a new phenomenon. It comes and goes. Some of the previous waves of crankiness were actually much worse. 

[regex]

23 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

As someone who has been on the forum 4 years, this is not a new phenomenon. It comes and goes. Some of the previous waves of crankiness were actually much worse. 

Probably slightly off-topic but I myself recall that a lot of my/the early anger stemmed from a lack of information.  The dev team should be applauded for their recent change in communication and information release, it is much easier to get behind the development process and appreciate what is being done nowadays.

[Snark]

4 hours ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

No developer should ever release any buggy app. If its buggy software, it shouldn't have shipped.  And I stand by that.

Except that every piece of software in the history of the universe is buggy.  It's essentially impossible to ship bug-free software.  There's always something you haven't caught.

I totally sympathize with the sentiment.  I'm a software engineer myself, and for stuff that I or my team are working on, I'm violently allergic to shipping crap.  I have a reputation among my colleagues as being a perfectionist.  So by all means, use every tool at one's disposal to get the bug count down before shipping.

But "zero" simply is not mathematically possible.  It's a matter of deciding how many bugs one is willing to ship with.  And that's going to be a function of a lot of parameters.  The end user's tolerance for bugs:  is it hospital life support equipment, or a casual phone game?  The time available:  do you have external factors that require shipping within a certain time period, and/or constraints on what features have to be there?  The money available:  can you hire a staff of hundreds of testers and engineers?  And so on, and so forth.

So although I take issue with your statement as-is, I'm totally on board with it if you qualify "buggy" as meaning not "has any bugs", but rather, "has too many bugs that affect too many people at too high a severity level."

Absolutely agree with that.

However, I contend that we don't have enough evidence to indicate whether KSP meets that bar.  A "lot" of people have bugs, yes, if you're measuring according to in count-em-on-your-fingers, see-all-these-posts-in-the-forum.  But unless you have some indication of what the actual, real numbers are and what the causes are of these "bugs", then you simply have no idea what numbers we're talking about.  We don't know how many supposed "bugs" are either player error or attributable to mods.  And there's  selection bias, in that we're only hearing from the vocal, tech-savvy people who happen to be here in the forums.

The available information just isn't there.  You could say that "25% of users have horrible, game-destroying bugs" and I couldn't prove you wrong.  But I could say that "fewer than 1% of users have significant bugs" and you couldn't prove that wrong, either, at least not with anything that I've seen in the forums thus far.  "Don't know" simply means "don't know."

4 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

I started only 2 polls, they're sequentially the 1st and 3rd that you've linked. The 2nd is @p1t1o's.

Whoops, sorry about that... hazard of having too many tabs open at once and getting the wires crossed.

4 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

• Neither of my polls asked about or offered the choice to have kept or not have kept 1.1.2 from release as an answer.
• You're playing a bit fast and loose with the wording of all the polls and their actual figures.

And this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that posts should be accurate and fair.

Yup, except that I make a point of accurate, fair posts.  I simply took the actual numbers in the polls, as they were at the time that I looked at them, and just reported those numbers (including adding two categories together where appropriate).  As for the wording:  I contend that I reported fairly.  I made a point of including the links to the original polls, so that anyone who wants to can look and judge for themselves whether I'm being reasonable or not.  I wouldn't presume to tell anyone what to think-- providing the original links is important so that people can judge for themselves.

Nitty-gritty details in spoiler section.

Spoiler

The first poll I refer to, which is yours, contains these two items (numbers current as of this moment).  Direct quotes.

• 52.92%:  "I'm playing 1.1.x without frequent bug-related issues."
• 26.28%:  "I'm playing 1.1.x despite frequent bug-related issues and/or bugs affecting the way I play."
• ...and then some additional items involving playing 1.0.5

Add those up and you have 79%, which is exactly what I said.  People who either aren't having significant problems, or (if they do have problems) are still choosing to play 1.1.x anyway-- i.e. not bad enough to make them stop playing or switch to 1.0.5.

The second poll I refer to, which I mistakenly attributed to you (thanks for the catch), contains these two items (numbers current as of this moment).  Direct quotes.

• 54.55%:  "MODDED - I'm on 1.1.2 having good classic kerbal fun"
• 14.44%:  "UNMODDED - I'm on 1.1.2 having good classic kerbal fun"
• ...with other choices available relating to having too many bugs to enjoy.

Add those up and you get 69% who are having, quote, "good classic kerbal fun", which again is exactly what I said.

The third poll I refer to, which is yours, contains these two items (numbers current as of this moment).  Direct quotes.  In response to the question of whether 1.1.x should be rolled back to 1.0.5:

• 40.24%:  "No, 1.1.x is progress and while it's imperfect I can live with it (for now)."
• 30.89%:  "No, 1.1.x is ok for me, but 1.0.5 should be available to anyone who can't play 1.1.x due to bugs."
• ...with other choices indicating that 1.1.x is not the preferable choice.

Add those up and you get 71% of respondents who would rather play 1.1.x than 1.0.5.  (Frankly, I thought this was kind of a "1.1.x:  Threat or Menace?" poll, with choices whose wording seemed slanted against 1.1.x, which can affect results.  But those two items seem to indicate pretty clearly that the majority of users would prefer to be on 1.1.x.)

The fourth poll I refer to, Andem's, contains these two items (numbers current as of this moment).  Direct quotes.  In response to how stable is the game for you:

• 38.36%:  "Very stable, rarely crashes."
• 41.1%:  "Definitely a few random crashes, but few enough that the game is still playable."
• ...with other choices involving having too many crashes to have fun.

That makes 79% of users who either have practically no crashes, or not enough to seriously interfere with their fun of the game.

So... exactly where in the preceding did I provide wrong numbers or misrepresent the polls?

 

4 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

But it is still evidence, which is what you asked for. Since we are dealing with 'a tiny and self-selected sample', and since the polls (taken together) suggest of that sample *at least* 1-in-5 seem to be having regular problems, I think that pretty much screams evidence that bugs are a widespread and extensive issue.

Except that it isn't evidence; it's just information.  Or rather... you can say that yes, it's evidence, but evidence of what, exactly?  It's evidence that a tiny, self-selected group of people, have given certain responses.  It's certainly not evidence that the player base as a whole is having large, game-impacting issues that prevent (or at least seriously detract from) enjoyment of the game.  Polls like these are fine, when taken simply as a curiosity to see what people say; I've got no issue with that.

What I do take issue with is when people read too much into a poll or a "study" and jump to conclusions, because this sort of poll actually says a lot less than you think it does, unless the methodology is highly rigorous.  Which in these cases, it isn't.  A poll like this can answer your question, "am I the only one having this problem?"  (Answer:  No.)  It won't answer the question "should Squad have shipped" or "did Squad screw up", because those answers depend on what percentage of the overall player base is affected, which these polls don't provide.

More in spoiler section.

Spoiler

Ever been to a town meeting?  i.e. the kind where the city council is proposing some change to zoning law or something, and they have an open meeting to invite public comment?  I have.  You've got a room with a few dozen citizens in it-- out of a community of maybe, say, 50,000 people.  And you hear long, strident, vociferous complaints about how the proposed resolution will be the End Of The World.  Anyone who simply arrived out of the blue and sat through that meeting, and was then asked "how horrible is this idea?" could easily be forgiven if they get the impression that a huge proportion of the population is violently opposed to this proposal, so it must be a Hugely Terrible Idea.

Except that... actually, the proposal may be a very minor thing as far as most people are concerned.  It may be that 99% of the population of the town are fine with it, and actually don't really care because it doesn't impact them.  But that's not the sampling that you get in the meeting:  you only get the self-invited people who are especially vocal, and/or especially opinionated, and/or happen to live right there next to the proposed project, or whatever.  It doesn't mean that their voices aren't valid, but it is not a valid measure of how impactful to the town this will be.

Selection bias is huge.  (I seem to recall reading about an early-20th-century poll that famously got a wrong prediction about an election.  Their methodology was to call random people out of the phone book and ask them.  It turns out that at that time, telephones weren't widespread yet, and people in the phone book tended to be the richest part of the population, and such people were disproportionately likely to favor Candidate A, whereas the poorer and more numerous citizens preferred candidate B.)

 

[The_Rocketeer]

@Snark agreed on most points and certainly on directly derived statistics and about trying to derive meaningful conclusions from the polls. I have (often ineffectually) tried to make the exact same point a number of times in other threads: the results of any forum poll are at best interesting, but almost entirely useless.

However, specifically on the question of complaint threads about KSP bugs (aka 'Doom Posts') and specifically on the point of evidence, I still respectfully disagree. For one thing, you yourself are presenting statistics from the polls as evidence of there not being a problem, which you must allow is no less questionable than the counter-statistics being used for the counter-argument. Secondly, as I remarked in previous posts, the polls consistently show that about 20% of responders are having what they consider game-breaking issues which they consider bug-related. There's still the view that actually, among the 65-80% of people who say they're playing regardless, there may be many afflicted with the same problem but who don't consider it game-breaking, or who are experiencing it in a less-severe fashion (perhaps because they have better processors or more RAM or something).  While I grant you that this is all unquantified, problematic and questionable evidence, it remains evidence of an apparent bug problem that is apparently affecting a significant-if-unspecified fraction of players and apparently makes the game unplayable. It's not the sort of evidence that results in academic theses, but it is the sort that provokes proper scientific studies that do.

From a my own observations on this, it seems to me that someone who is annoyed enough to complain about the game on the official forum because they are unable to enjoy the game that they have paid their hard earned money to own is hardly likely to be less annoyed by a barrage of "Kraken! not another whiny 'vocal minority person'!" replies. This doesn't help anybody - doesn't help the complainer get over their annoyance or fix the problem, doesn't help the complaining-about-the-complainer stop seeing complaints on the front page of the general discussion forum, and doesn't help you and me get on with the more interesting and fascinating discussions going on elsewhere on the forums.

[Snark]

15 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

For one thing, you yourself are presenting statistics from the polls as evidence of there not being a problem

Except that I'm not.  Simply that it's possible to read them that way, by way of illustrating the point that the polls don't actually give the real story one way or the other. Apologies if I didn't make that sufficiently clear; I attempted to do so by reiterating that sentiment many times during my last couple of posts, e.g. "don't know means don't know".

16 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

There's still the view that actually, among the 65-80% of people who say they're playing regardless, there may be many afflicted with the same problem

The view, supported by what evidence?  I still contend that "don't know means don't know."

Posting complaints about "I have a real problem here" is a perfectly valid thing to do.  I'd be peeved too if I were having KSP problems as severe as some such posters appear to have.

That's not the same thing as saying "Squad should have done X instead of Y", because answering that question requires lots of additional data points that simply aren't there.

18 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

It's not the sort of evidence that results in academic theses, but it is the sort that provokes proper scientific studies that do.

Certainly!  So how about if we wait until and unless a proper scientific study comes along to settle the matter, rather than jumping to conclusions?  But until and unless that happens, all that polls like this really say are that it's an interesting question-- not that "Squad fell down on the job."

Of course, you could point out that it doesn't say that they didn't, screw up, either, and you'd be right.  But I belong to a school of thought that folks should be innocent until proven guilty.  Squad devs have shown a lot of dedication and user engagement in these forums.  Everything I've seen indicates that they're passionate, dedicated, hard-working people who really want to ship a quality product.  So I'm willing to give them a certain amount of benefit-of-the-doubt.  If there's an area where there's not enough public information to say one way or the other whether they had good reasons for what they did, I'm inclined to cut them quite a bit of slack and take it on faith.

25 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

From a my own observations on this, it seems to me that someone who is annoyed enough to complain about the game on the official forum because they are unable to enjoy the game that they have paid their hard earned money to own is hardly likely to be less annoyed by a barrage of "Kraken! not another whiny 'vocal minority person'!" replies. This doesn't help anybody - doesn't help the complainer get over their annoyance or fix the problem, doesn't help the complaining-about-the-complainer stop seeing complaints on the front page of the general discussion forum, and doesn't help you and me get on with the more interesting and fascinating discussions going on elsewhere on the forums.

Well, sure, I'm completely with you on that.  No arguments there. 

And I hope you'll note that at no point in any of my posts, here or elsewhere, have I ever said that a person shouldn't be vocal about their problems.  "I have a problem" is always a totally valid complaint.

[regex]

17 minutes ago, Snark said:

"I have a problem" is always a totally valid complaint.

Perhaps the sentiment against said posts is that people post them in General, usually with a healthy helping of vitriol while exclaiming their intentions of quitting the game, rather than in the support forums where they would be taken more seriously and possibly receive the help and attention they need?  Should we begin guiding them there?  Maybe that's something for the mods to discuss?

E: Because seriously, whenever I see someone post an "I quit" in General I can't help thinking they're trolling or stirring things up.

Edited June 7, 2016 by regex

[m4v]

13 minutes ago, regex said:

Perhaps the sentiment against said posts is that people post them in General, usually with a healthy helping of vitriol while exclaiming their intentions of quitting the game, rather than in the support forums where they would be taken more seriously and possibly receive the help and attention they need?

They post in General because they are ranting/venting, not seeking help, is been known for a while that the support forums aren't going to fix a game that Squad shipped with Unity bugs.