Why is this game still on the market place?

[nascarlaser1]

32 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I don't hate 1.1.3.

1.1.2. crashed early and often for me in the VAB, but 1.1.3 works OK. Just don't happen to let your kerbal touch a landing leg, or the leg (and possibly the kerbal) is likely to explode for mysterious reasons.

In some ways I liked the early 1.0.x versions the best, but they had problems where Squad hadn't really balanced their new physics with the legacy parts.

IMO, the main issue with the game overall is that it carries too many remnants of early development decisions. Personally I think it would be better to start from a clean slate and make KSP 2.0, but that would be years of work and might not result in a game that is substantially better than what exists now.

oh ok. I did not know about the exploding leg part. thank you for telling me.

[Guest]

FWIW I find KSP to be more than reasonably bug-free. It's a seriously complex game, some bugs are unavoidable.

The bugs that most annoy me are related to vehicle assembly, specifically the way parts sometimes fail to snap where they should (docking ports especially) and sub-assemblies sometimes can't be saved with a mysterious PART CANNOT BE PLACED message. I've learned to work around most of those too.

The rendez-vous arrow calculation bug is annoying as well, but something I've learned to work around as well. 

Everything else has been frankly pretty minor. Just had a glitch causing the rocket to explode spectacularly on the launchpad (restart and reload sorted that), plus some pretty minor stuff like kerbals tripping on landing struts causing them to fail, some odd wheel stress calculations where docking heavy rovers causes most tyres on them to blow, that sort of thing. I've had almost no crashes, no game-breaking bugs, really nothing major.

Compared to most games I've played recently <cough> Pillars of Eternity <cough> <cough> this is highly polished.

Still a bummer about the console release. Companies really shouldn't do that.

[Corona688]

Console is not computer.  The hardware is slower, interface is poor, resolution limited, and development is a pain.

I'm of the impression that the console release was a "now or never" situation -- if they didn't release now, they'd lose the ability to do so as the codebases between console and PC got further and further out of sync.  For a brief time after the Unity 5 update, they'd be close to the same, if they didn't seize the opportunity, it might never happen again.

Unfortunately console is not computer.  Testing isn't as simple as editing and reloading, updates aren't as simple as pushing a file on the website, and debugging hardware you don't control is a trying experience.  That they managed it at all is something of an accomplishment, but their job's not over.

So if you're feeling left hung out to dry -- don't.  The devs are not twiddling their mustaches and counting their money, they're feeling at least as much consternation as you, and they're the ones who have to do rocket surgery through a pinhole to fix it.

Edited August 23, 2016 by Corona688

[pandaman]

I've been lurking on this thread a bit  and following, though I don't claim to have read or memorised every post (so please don't test me on it).

Overall I find the game perfectly playable (on PC) and have encountered relatively few crashes or serious bugs compared to many.

That said, the issue with the console versions losing saved progress is a serious one which those affected are quite rightly complaining about.  The 'tone' used in some cases is probably a bit too harsh or aggressive (or comes across that way), but the complaint that the game is 'unplayable' (whilst maybe not strictly 'technically' true) is certainly valid from a practical point if view.  I know I would get pretty miffed if my progress kept getting erased and would probably give up playing too.  So giving them a hard time for not being patient is a little unfair, in most cases (I guess) this will be their first proper encounter with KSP, it could gave been better, and they deserve better. 

This game is awesome, and well worth those suffering from this issue hanging in there for the inevitable fix. In the meantime I would suggest they enjoy what they can do, learn about the game and how to do stuff, and practice some of the tricky stuff like rendezvous and docking, and landing on the Mun etc.   Then, when the fix arrives 'All these world's are yours...'

[Snark]

11 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Imagine the newest version of Excel has a bug that prevents the use of conditional sums. Citibank upgrades all its Office suits worldwide, or gets the new Excel with new computers, and their analysts find out they can't do conditional sums. Do you think this would happen? Or that Citibank would simply shrug it if Microsoft tells them "Oh, you didn't do your research before upgrading, thanks for your money, we'll fix it whenever we can/want". Or is Citibank a bit more demanding than that?

No, it wouldn't happen that way, but not for the reason you think, because software production doesn't work that way.

The reason it doesn't happen that way is not because "Citibank is more demanding."  It's because Microsoft has > $10¹⁰ cash on hand, because they sell products like this for hundreds of dollars to many tens of millions of licenses.  And because it has hundreds of people working on that software.  Including many, many, many testers.  And a software release cycle measured in years.  And no obligation to produce quickie incremental releases.  And a customer base that expects very infrequent but solid releases, because it's a spreadsheet and not a computer game.

If the spreadsheet were produced by one or two dozen people, and had to add features on a timescale of weeks, and had a demanding user base that insisted on frequent releases, like a video game produced and sold to a few hundred thousand people at the cost of a dinner-for-two at a mid-scale restaurant?  Then yes, it would happen.

 

9 hours ago, razark said:

No, it's comparing software and software.

In the same sense that comparing a hamster to a whale is comparing a mammal to a mammal.

Software production is like a sewer:  What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

If you have a gargantuan cash flow, measured in billions-with-a-b dollars, and you've got literally tens of thousands of employees, including thousands of testers and two-year-long development cycles for a new version release, then you get something like Excel.

And if you're running on a shoestring with a tiny handful of developers and testers and your cash flow is probably at least three orders of magnitude smaller than Microsoft's, and you're running on Game Time and not Enterprise Business Time, and you have to keep it fresh and turn out new releases every few months or mobs gather on your doorstep with pitchforks, then you get something like KSP.

 

9 hours ago, juanml82 said:

And Microsoft, a software company, wouldn't release an Office version with such a bug, period, because its customers demand quality.

Squad, EA, Paradox, and countless other software companies don't care to release, and cash in, software with such bugs, because their customers don't demand quality. The solution to this issue is to demand quality.

This is-- and I mean this in the friendliest way, speaking as someone who has spent over twenty years shipping commercial software for a living-- utter nonsense.

Software is a zero-sum game.  You have a certain amount of dollars to get the job done.  There's never enough to do everything.  Spending more money on one thing means spending less money on something else.  Every company up and down the size-and-power spectrum-- from titans like Microsoft down to little indie gigs like Squad-- is subject to that same reality.  Every one of them has to make a strategic choice as to how to divvy up the budget.  The process goes like this:

1. We need to sell our product.
2. What do our customers want?  What's important to them?
3. Allocate resources to target that.

A video game like KSP has a very different "bug profile" from a major enterprise suite like Microsoft Office-- not just because Microsoft has gobs more money to spend on it than Squad does (which they do), but also because the parameters are different.  Office workers using Excel don't have the same needs and expectations as video game players flying rocketships.

• If Microsoft wrote Office the way Squad writes KSP... they'd alienate their user base and go out of business.
• And if Squad wrote KSP the way Microsoft writes Office... the same thing would happen.

For example, I'm pretty sure that the KSP community would pitch flaming blue conniptions if Squad were to go totally dead radio-silent for a couple of years between each release.  But spreadsheet users?  They're not exactly hammering on the door for an update.

A company doesn't blink at spending a few hundred bucks for an office suite for a worker.  I don't think many folks would be buying and playingKSP if it cost $200 or more.

You want more features?  Okay, that means more money spent on new features.  Which means something else has gotta give.  Maybe you have fewer releases, so they're much farther apart and players have to wait much longer to get their hands on it.  Or maybe it means they charge $200 for the game instead of the relative pittance they do now.  Or maybe they'd charge a subscription fee.  Or maybe they can't spend as much time on testing, or can't hire as many testers-- which means more bugs.

It's easy for you to complain about the bugs.  They're right there, they're staring you in the face.  But what you don't see is what you would have to give up in exchange for not having those bugs.  It would be real, and it would hurt.  Suppose Squad had gone completely silent after 0.23.5 (no contracts, no career mode, no revised aero, no updated spaceplane parts, no ISRU, no lots of things) in early 2014, and there was not a single update until now... and then they suddenly released 1.1.3 out of the blue with all of that stuff as brand-new features, but with much more solid quality (fewer bugs), at a substantially higher price.

Would you want that?  I sure wouldn't.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure the 1.1.3 I would get in such a scenario would be quite inferior in terms of playability to the one I actually have, because it would have meant that Squad was developing them in isolation from the player base, and we wouldn't have all the incremental improvements generated from the reams of player feedback that happens each time any new features are released.

Yes, there are bugs.  Yes, they suck.  But I'm sorry-- you don't get to complain "there are bugs", at least not in isolation.  You only get to say "I would be willing to give up ___ in exchange for having fewer bugs."  Features, release schedules, cash-- take your pick.  And no matter what you do or what tradeoff you make, there would still be no way to get to the state of something as big or as polished as Microsoft Office, because Squad simply isn't big enough for that.  The cash flow isn't there.

The state of KSP is the way it is because Squad did what any software company has to do:  they looked at the user base, took their best guesses about which tradeoffs would likely work best for that user base, and then divided up their budget accordingly.

Did they do a good job of that?  I happen to think they're doing fine.  You can disagree, of course... but unless you ship software for a living, I don't think you're in any position to judge that.

 

[m4v]

21 minutes ago, Snark said:

Yes, there are bugs.  Yes, they suck.  But I'm sorry-- you don't get to complain "there are bugs", at least not in isolation.  You only get to say "I would be willing to give up ___ in exchange for having fewer bugs."  Features, release schedules, cash-- take your pick.  And no matter what you do or what tradeoff you make, there would still be no way to get to the state of something as big or as polished as Microsoft Office, because Squad simply isn't big enough for that.  The cash flow isn't there.

The state of KSP is the way it is because Squad did what any software company has to do:  they looked at the user base, took their best guesses about which tradeoffs would likely work best for that user base, and then divided up their budget accordingly.

Did they do a good job of that?  I happen to think they're doing fine.  You can disagree, of course... but unless you ship software for a living, I don't think you're in any position to judge that.

So easy to say that when you aren't using one of the broken platforms that KSP supposedly supports.

[Snark]

Just now, m4v said:

So easy to say that when you aren't using one of the broken platforms that KSP supposedly supports.

Oh, I've been bitten by bad software bugs puh-lenty.  And I've also been on the other end of that equation, which is no picnic, trust me-- it is not fun to be the developer and be under the gun to get some serious issue fixed quick-like-a-bunny.

But that's not the issue here:

I'm not defending the quality of the console port.  It sounds like it's caused a lot of players some serious grief.  If you want to argue that "Squad shouldn't have gotten into the console-games biz", fine.

However... saying that the problem is because "players don't demand quality", and that the fix is to start demanding it, is patently ridiculous.  That's not how it works.  You don't get better software by "demanding quality," any more than consumers fed up with inflation can solve the economic problems by "demanding lower prices."

If enough people "demand quality", i.e. enough to shift the software producer's budgetary focus, then you'll get different software... but not necessarily better.  "Demanding quality" doesn't give a software developer the ability  to magically produce more with the same amount of money.

 

[cantab]

13 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

Amen, but the sad truth is that most people aren't :/

I haven't been involved in developing games, just office automation, but I've seen that the patterns are almost identical (or even worse when it comes to games).

The data we got when we actively asked our users for feedback was clear, but it didn't match the actual usage metrics at all  :/

So we took the decision to ignore the poll and base our fix/upgrade on how the users actually used the software.

I'd say developers should be wary of approaches like that though. For one there may be biases in the usage metrics, ie who's turning off sending the metrics for whatever reason? For two, perception matters. If users are encountering bugs X and Y on a daily basis, but the complaints are all about bug Z that only comes up once every two weeks, I'd say you're probably best off fixing bug Z.

[Curveball Anders]

14 minutes ago, cantab said:

I'd say developers should be wary of approaches like that though. For one there may be biases in the usage metrics, ie who's turning off sending the metrics for whatever reason? For two, perception matters. If users are encountering bugs X and Y on a daily basis, but the complaints are all about bug Z that only comes up once every two weeks, I'd say you're probably best off fixing bug Z.

The diff between games and office automation is that we (as in the big ebil IT department) doesn't have to give our users the option of turning metrics off, we track what our users do, end of story,

We also have the leisure of using all the nasty little tools that science has made available and use forums, email forms, usage metrics and most important, in person interviews with our users.

The net result is almost always the same, the problems that the users report, even to my face, isn't the ones that are actually causing issues for them. They have created ways to cope with the real problems and apply them automatically so they don't even know that they are dealing with 'em.

Sometimes we do stick lipstick on the pig and fix (or hide) the issue that the users report as the main problem, but most often we look at the metrics, and fix the core issues.

But that said, normally we only get credit for the lipstick, which explains why games and other public software is developed the way it is.

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Curveball Anders
Gramer

[Jovus]

So, funnily enough, it's been noted that enterprise software and gaming software aren't the same.

This is true. If a spreadsheet program does math wrong, or a health record program crashes or returns wrong data, it gets fixed and fast, because there are potentially millions or billions of dollars on the line, and part of the agreement of buying a product line is also buying support for that product line. Always is, always has been, always will be. This is why, for example, until IBM picked up Red Hat, Linux was having serious trouble breaking into the corporate market: because if your OS broke, there was nobody's neck on the line for the damage.

Fortunately, entertainment software does not follow the same paradigm. I say this is fortunate because we'd never get any if it did. We'd still be playing things volunteers hacked together and disseminated through back channels, explicitly with no claims of support. Games we all know and love are too complicated for that production model, KSP being a prime example.

That said, looked at objectively, we do know that often, for games from reputable companies with a list of titles under their belt, there is some expectation of support. If you bought a game from Ubisoft and you simply couldn't play it at all on release day, you'd be up in arms. People would refuse to pay for the game and demand their money back.

Complaining that people are doing the same with KSP is counterproductive. Maybe Squad isn't a AAA developer like EA or Ubisoft. But they released on the same platforms, with a game of similar complexity and similar price.

Maybe you think holding Squad to the standards of aforementioned large game development companies is unfair. That's fine; that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. I'm partially of that viewpoint myself, frankly. But then, complaining that other people have buyer's remorse and/or plan to vote with their wallets is counterproductive. These people have already had an experience they consider unacceptable, and telling them they're wrong isn't going to fix it.

 

Saying, "You shouldn't feel like that," is the equivalent of saying, "You're playing the game wrong," with the added presumption of putting your hand in the other guy's wallet.

[cantab]

10 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I dont think it is dishonest. You can compare it to whatever you like but this product is NOT a laptop, nor any physical product, this is software - and "Faulty" would then apply to pretty much every product, going by the definition of bugs=faulty.

In the UK under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 customers are entitled to expect "digital content", which probably includes computer software, meet the same standards as physical goods. It should be "of satisfactory quality", which includes the requirement of "fitness for all the purposes for which digital content of that kind is usually supplied" - being able to reliably save your game would qualify there I think. It should also be "fit for particular purpose" in some cases, And it should be "as described". These rights cannot be excluded or restricted by contract or EULA terms.

The obligation to meet these standards falls upon the retailer. If you're in the UK and Sony or Microsoft won't give you your money back for KSP, consider taking it to the small claims court if it gets that far. Or just complain a lot. Sony and Microsoft are the ones with the real power in this whole affair.

19 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

The diff between games and office automation is that we (as in the big ebil IT department) doesn't have to give our users the option of turning metrics off, we track what our users do, end of story,

We also have the leisure of using all the nasty little tools that science has made available and use forums, email forms, usage metrics and most important, in person interviews with our users.

The net result is almost always the same, the problems that the users report, even to my face, isn't the ones that are actually causing issues for them. They have created ways to cope with the real problems and apply them automatically so they don't even know that they are dealing with 'em.

Sometimes we do stick lipstick on the pig and fix (or hide) the issue that the users report as the main problem, but most often we look at the metrics, and fix the core issues.

But that said, normally we only get credit for the lipstick, which explains why games and other public software is developed the way it is.

 

If it's off-the-shelf software how can you rule out firewalls or outright lack of a net connection blocking those metrics? (Granted, if it's an internal project, or custom software where your company can demand "Thou Shalt Send Metrics" in the contract, then you can guarantee them.)

In any case, you just said that your users cope with what the "real problems" are. Well your project is your project, do what you like, but for other developers (*cough* Squad *cough*) I still maintain, fix the things the users are complaining about because that's what they're not coping with. It's all too easy to get caught up in what we as developers and IT professionals think matters and want to do, and end up wasting time on stuff the users don't really care about.

[Alshain]

11 minutes ago, cantab said:

In the UK under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 customers are entitled to expect "digital content", which probably includes computer software, meet the same standards as physical goods. It should be "of satisfactory quality", which includes the requirement of "fitness for all the purposes for which digital content of that kind is usually supplied" - being able to reliably save your game would qualify there I think. It should also be "fit for particular purpose" in some cases, And it should be "as described". These rights cannot be excluded or restricted by contract or EULA terms.

The obligation to meet these standards falls upon the retailer. If you're in the UK and Sony or Microsoft won't give you your money back for KSP, consider taking it to the small claims court if it gets that far. Or just complain a lot. Sony and Microsoft are the ones with the real power in this whole affair.

Not Sony, it's not been released there for the PS4.  Also, does the law offer an allowance for repairing the issue rather than simply refunding it?  If so, there presumably there is also some reasonable expectation of time to repair it.  Such a timeframe would most likely be longer than 1 1/2 months.  I don't live in the UK, so I honestly do not know the law specifically, but the typical notion is refund, replace, or repair and Squad is going with the latter I'm sure.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Alshain

[Stargate525]

5 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

FWIW I find KSP to be more than reasonably bug-free. It's a seriously complex game, some bugs are unavoidable.

It's... really not. Besides the parts list, the major functions of the game have been in place for a year now. Hell, DOCKING was the last major new functionality to be added, as far as I can remember. Docking, shipbuilding, and a flightsim/physics engine. That's basically it. No story, no plot, a barebones career mode...

[cantab]

8 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Not Sony, it's not been released there for the PS4.  Also, does the law offer an allowance for repairing the issue rather than simply refunding it?  If so, there presumably there is also some reasonable expectation of time to repair it.  Such a timeframe would most likely be longer than 1 1/2 months.  I don't live in the UK, so I honestly do not know the law specifically, but the typical notion is refund, replace, or repair and Squad is going with the latter I'm sure.

Oh yeah, forgot there's not been an EU PS4 release yet. Hmmm, I wonder if quality issues are why. And yes, the seller can repair or replace the item, though "reasonable time" is indeed not defined in law. So if Squad and Flying Tiger get a patch out soonish that resolves the most serious console issues (the "big one" being the save corruption IMHO) then it'll probably be made OK.

5 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

FWIW I find KSP to be more than reasonably bug-free. It's a seriously complex game, some bugs are unavoidable.

Yeah, PC KSP is fine. Some releases have been a bit crash-happy and its got its share of glitches, but nothing I consider a dealbreaker. It's the console releases that have the problems, with both additional bugs and dubious design decisions like the control scheme making the existing bugs more annoying.

[cantab]

10 hours ago, nascarlaser1 said:

can someone explain to me why everyone hates 1.1.3??? I have watched videos and no where are any landing gears or wheels messed up. I have 1.1 or 1.1.1 (can't figure out which) and I agree it does crash every so often, but it runs 99% of the time.

I can suggest an explanation for this. With the wheels in KSP 1.1.x I think players fall into two groups. Those who have figured them out, messing with the settings and placement and maybe being careful with the usage. And those who have simply given up on using them. I'm in the latter group. I just build VTOLs now, or put parachutes on things, because I don't think that making the landing gear work should take more time than building and testing the whole rest of the plane.

So unless the video is specifically for either exploiting glitches or ranting about bugs, you probably won't see much of the wheel trouble on Youtube.

[MrDave]

My experience with KSP on Xbox has been enjoyable, although I know this is not true for others. I've yet to encounter any game breaking bugs in my career, only minor ones, perhaps due to my playstyle. Using a controller was daunting after playing on pc for almost 4 years, but I've adjusted to the point that if button mapping becomes available, I'll likely not change it. It is unfortunate that others are currently unable to enjoy KSP on their consoles, but I don't believe Squad and Flying Tiger will cut and run.

[pincushionman]

I think we all need to take a deep breath here. Definitely us PC players do. I can say with confidence that most of us aren't really aware of what problems are really breaking the console players' experience. I know this is the first I've seen of this savegame-not-working thing, but that is a very serious thing indeed.

Now, there are complications discussing this console port issue. Because it's not so clear what the process is for anything. We've all become familiar with how SQUAD handles its releases on its website and with Steam; we've been through it and SQUAD has always been pretty open and transparent about it. But remember they changed their process at about…oh, 0.90 or so, and we were all pretty…unhappy about that too.

But this is different. SQUAD does not own this release and update process. It is Flying Tiger's responsibility to manage it. And if there are bugs in their releases (that are NOT present in the PC versions), then it is bugs in their code, not SQUAD's.

Maybe.

Maybe there's something about SQUAD's save files that the consoles don't like. But that doesn't make any sense. On PC, they're just glorified XML-kinda text, there should be no issue reading or writing that. So maybe it's FTE's code not handling the file read/write to the console file system correctly. But that doesn't make sense either, since Unity should be offering an abstraction that just works.

And while SQUAD has a strong incentive to get it fixed, if it's indeed FTE code or a Unity issue, it's not clear whether SQUAD has the ability - or authority - to actually implement the change. We don't know the details of the relationship between SQUAD and FTE. And even when a fix is made, it's not so clear how quickly it can be implemented, given that it's a process owned by yet another third party (the consoles).

So…TLDR…I don't know what to think about this.

Edited August 24, 2016 by pincushionman

[juanml82]

53 minutes ago, pincushionman said:

I think we all need to take a deep breath here. Definitely us PC players do. I can say with confidence that most of us aren't really aware of what problems are really breaking the console players' experience. I know this is the first I've seen of this savegame-not-working thing, but that is a very serious thing indeed.

Now, there are complications discussing this console port issue. Because it's not so clear what the process is for anything. We've all become familiar with how SQUAD handles its releases on its website and with Steam; we've been through it and SQUAD has always been pretty open and transparent about it. But remember they changed their process at about…oh, 0.90 or so, and we were all pretty…unhappy about that too.

But this is different. SQUAD does not own this release and update process. It is Flying Tiger's responsibility to manage it. And if there are bugs in their releases (that are NOT present in the PC versions), then it is bugs in their code, not SQUAD's.

Maybe.

Maybe there's something about SQUAD's save files that the consoles don't like. But that doesn't make any sense. On PC, they're just glorified XML-kinda text, there should be no issue reading or writing that. So maybe it's FTE's code not handling the file read/write to the console file system correctly. But that doesn't make sense either, since Unity should be offering an abstraction that just works.

And while SQUAD has a strong incentive to get it fixed, if it's indeed FTE code or a Unity issue, it's not clear whether SQUAD has the ability - or authority - to actually implement the change. We don't know the details of the relationship between SQUAD and FTE. And even when a fix is made, it's not so clear how quickly it can be implemented, given that it's a process owned by yet another third party (the consoles).

So…TLDR…I don't know what to think about this.

And why should customers be concerned about this, at all?

3 hours ago, Snark said:

No, it wouldn't happen that way, but not for the reason you think, because software production doesn't work that way.

The reason it doesn't happen that way is not because "Citibank is more demanding."  It's because Microsoft has > $10¹⁰ cash on hand, because they sell products like this for hundreds of dollars to many tens of millions of licenses.  And because it has hundreds of people working on that software.  Including many, many, many testers.  And a software release cycle measured in years.  And no obligation to produce quickie incremental releases.  And a customer base that expects very infrequent but solid releases, because it's a spreadsheet and not a computer game.

If the spreadsheet were produced by one or two dozen people, and had to add features on a timescale of weeks, and had a demanding user base that insisted on frequent releases, like a video game produced and sold to a few hundred thousand people at the cost of a dinner-for-two at a mid-scale restaurant?  Then yes, it would happen.

 

In the same sense that comparing a hamster to a whale is comparing a mammal to a mammal.

Software production is like a sewer:  What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

If you have a gargantuan cash flow, measured in billions-with-a-b dollars, and you've got literally tens of thousands of employees, including thousands of testers and two-year-long development cycles for a new version release, then you get something like Excel.

And if you're running on a shoestring with a tiny handful of developers and testers and your cash flow is probably at least three orders of magnitude smaller than Microsoft's, and you're running on Game Time and not Enterprise Business Time, and you have to keep it fresh and turn out new releases every few months or mobs gather on your doorstep with pitchforks, then you get something like KSP.

 

This is-- and I mean this in the friendliest way, speaking as someone who has spent over twenty years shipping commercial software for a living-- utter nonsense.

Software is a zero-sum game.  You have a certain amount of dollars to get the job done.  There's never enough to do everything.  Spending more money on one thing means spending less money on something else.  Every company up and down the size-and-power spectrum-- from titans like Microsoft down to little indie gigs like Squad-- is subject to that same reality.  Every one of them has to make a strategic choice as to how to divvy up the budget.  The process goes like this:

1. We need to sell our product.
2. What do our customers want?  What's important to them?
3. Allocate resources to target that.

A video game like KSP has a very different "bug profile" from a major enterprise suite like Microsoft Office-- not just because Microsoft has gobs more money to spend on it than Squad does (which they do), but also because the parameters are different.  Office workers using Excel don't have the same needs and expectations as video game players flying rocketships.

• If Microsoft wrote Office the way Squad writes KSP... they'd alienate their user base and go out of business.
• And if Squad wrote KSP the way Microsoft writes Office... the same thing would happen.

For example, I'm pretty sure that the KSP community would pitch flaming blue conniptions if Squad were to go totally dead radio-silent for a couple of years between each release.  But spreadsheet users?  They're not exactly hammering on the door for an update.

A company doesn't blink at spending a few hundred bucks for an office suite for a worker.  I don't think many folks would be buying and playingKSP if it cost $200 or more.

You want more features?  Okay, that means more money spent on new features.  Which means something else has gotta give.  Maybe you have fewer releases, so they're much farther apart and players have to wait much longer to get their hands on it.  Or maybe it means they charge $200 for the game instead of the relative pittance they do now.  Or maybe they'd charge a subscription fee.  Or maybe they can't spend as much time on testing, or can't hire as many testers-- which means more bugs.

It's easy for you to complain about the bugs.  They're right there, they're staring you in the face.  But what you don't see is what you would have to give up in exchange for not having those bugs.  It would be real, and it would hurt.  Suppose Squad had gone completely silent after 0.23.5 (no contracts, no career mode, no revised aero, no updated spaceplane parts, no ISRU, no lots of things) in early 2014, and there was not a single update until now... and then they suddenly released 1.1.3 out of the blue with all of that stuff as brand-new features, but with much more solid quality (fewer bugs), at a substantially higher price.

Would you want that?  I sure wouldn't.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure the 1.1.3 I would get in such a scenario would be quite inferior in terms of playability to the one I actually have, because it would have meant that Squad was developing them in isolation from the player base, and we wouldn't have all the incremental improvements generated from the reams of player feedback that happens each time any new features are released.

Yes, there are bugs.  Yes, they suck.  But I'm sorry-- you don't get to complain "there are bugs", at least not in isolation.  You only get to say "I would be willing to give up ___ in exchange for having fewer bugs."  Features, release schedules, cash-- take your pick.  And no matter what you do or what tradeoff you make, there would still be no way to get to the state of something as big or as polished as Microsoft Office, because Squad simply isn't big enough for that.  The cash flow isn't there.

The state of KSP is the way it is because Squad did what any software company has to do:  they looked at the user base, took their best guesses about which tradeoffs would likely work best for that user base, and then divided up their budget accordingly.

Did they do a good job of that?  I happen to think they're doing fine.  You can disagree, of course... but unless you ship software for a living, I don't think you're in any position to judge that.

I'm not a software developer. I run a small shop. Unlike game companies, angry customers can indeed show up at my door with pitchforks and torches. So Rule #1 is "Don't scam customers. Ever.", Rule #2 is "If something can break, warn the customer beforehand" and Rule #3 is "If something can break, maybe is better loose the sale than risk an actual customer with pitchfork and torches or, maybe worse, a lawyer"

Now, please don't ever compare again people angry at an Internet forum with people angry at someone's doorstep.

0.23.5 was Early Access. You expect bugs at that point, that's why it's early access. You also expect new content.

1.0 is release. Bugs or exploits may happen from time to time. Additional content? I've started a new Skyrim game some weeks ago - the game remains the same since the last paid DLC was released. I'm not expecting new content. I got a complete game, with a few bugs which didn't include being unable to save the game and, while at some point weird dancing dragons showed up between patches, it was a rather smooth experience. Bethesda moved to Fallout 4, which I didn't particularly like, and none gathered at Bethesda's forums angry because Skyrim's development ended.

You also, paraphrasing, claim enterprise customers demand quality while game customers accept excrements. I agree. And that allows game developers to sell excrements. Why not? excrements is cheap. Quality is not. It requires money. But as long as customers accept excrements, excrements is what they'll have. Why bother with expensive quality, if cheap excrements is acceptable? And a game like KSP without the ability to save is excrements. And it's a scam. There is no way around it. We aren't talking about Gilly's ridiculous timewarp limit, or some exploit which allows for a kraken drive. We're talking about save games.

I also disagree with Squad listening to their fan base. The game has been in development for years and interplanetary travel is still nearly impossible - or incredibly demanding - with stock tools. The suggestions subforum is filled with thread after thread after thread of people suggesting a better career experience. More stuff to do in celestial bodies. KAC and KER, or at least a dV readout are at the top of both the "must have mods" and the "mods that should be stock" lists. Gilly's ridiculous timewarp hasn't been fixed in years. Instead, we got a 2.5m subsonic turbojet and a stock antenna range. How many times were 2.5m subsonic turbojets requested in the suggestions subforums vs. a dV readout, or KAC?

So no, Squad isn't listening to their fan base. At best, they are listening to telemetry data, but that's marred by the vicious circle in which Squad doesn't provide the tools to do interplanetary journeys, so casual players (that is, most players) don't do interplanetary journeys and Squad believes its listening to their players by not bothering with KAC or porkchop plots. It's like Bethesda didn't add fast travel to the early betas of Skyrim and since players don't venture far, they decide Skyrim only needs to include the first two initial towns - a great game that would be!

Also, you may be well advised to read something about marketing. You don't argue with your customer's expectations. You try to fulfill them.

[Columbia]

58 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

I also disagree with Squad listening to their fan base. The game has been in development for years and interplanetary travel is still nearly impossible - or incredibly demanding - with stock tools.

Good point.

Quote

 The suggestions subforum is filled with thread after thread after thread of people suggesting a better career experience. More stuff to do in celestial bodies. KAC and KER, or at least a dV readout are at the top of both the "must have mods" and the "mods that should be stock" lists. Gilly's ridiculous timewarp hasn't been fixed in years. Instead, we got a 2.5m subsonic turbojet and a stock antenna range. How many times were 2.5m subsonic turbojets requested in the suggestions subforums vs. a dV readout, or KAC?

They are under no obligation to follow their fanbase's desires. 

And assuming you've read the suggestions for so long as to be able to see what players want, you might have also seen that Squad's thinking about it, while presenting the argument that Delta-V calculators could ruin the "Trial and Error" feel of the game. I don't agree with that, but that's their stand, is it not?

Quote

So no, Squad isn't listening to their fan base. At best, they are listening to telemetry data, but that's marred by the vicious circle in which Squad doesn't provide the tools to do interplanetary journeys, so casual players (that is, most players) don't do interplanetary journeys and Squad believes its listening to their players by not bothering with KAC or porkchop plots. It's like Bethesda didn't add fast travel to the early betas of Skyrim and since players don't venture far, they decide Skyrim only needs to include the first two initial towns - a great game that would be!

Listening to their fanbase doesn't mean implementing every single suggestion they want.

And your reasoning is that "no proper interplanetary tools in stock" = "not listening to fanbase". A great argument, that would be!

Edited August 24, 2016 by Columbia

[severedsolo]

5 hours ago, Alshain said:

Not Sony, it's not been released there for the PS4.  Also, does the law offer an allowance for repairing the issue rather than simply refunding it?  If so, there presumably there is also some reasonable expectation of time to repair it.  Such a timeframe would most likely be longer than 1 1/2 months.  I don't live in the UK, so I honestly do not know the law specifically, but the typical notion is refund, replace, or repair and Squad is going with the latter I'm sure.

You only have 30 days to request your refund, so presumably this would be the "reasonable timeline" you were talking about.

The law is pretty wooly about this though, it just says a "reasonable timeframe" - presumably you could enter an agreement with the supplier where they would agree to refund if they couldn't fix it, but it may go over the 30 days.

Edited August 24, 2016 by severedsolo

[Stargate525]

3 hours ago, Columbia said:

Listening to their fanbase doesn't mean implementing every single suggestion they want.

And your reasoning is that "no proper interplanetary tools in stock" = "not listening to fanbase". A great argument, that would be!

That's not what he's saying. He's saying that their rationale is flawed and based on data which is affected by confirmation bias of the issue itself. Squad may or may not listen to the request for stock dV and TwR, but it does ignore the rebuttal to their reply. There is no conversation here, there is decree from on high.

That is not communication, that is PR. If that's the relation they want, then they should expect complaints fitting that relationship.

[StarStryder]

On 8/20/2016 at 7:17 PM, KSK said:

But the consistently overoptimistic deadlines do get tiring. It suggests that some part of the pipeline isn't working and that somebody somewhere has a consistently wrong understanding of how much can be done in a given amount of time. It also suggests that lessons either are not being, or cannot be,  learned, which is depressing whichever way you look at it.

Welcome to software project planning.  It is notoriously difficult to estimate development times.  Tasks that should be simple unmask some horrible technical complication that triples the estimate. Or you encounter a bug in a third party library that takes weeks or months to get fixed (*cough* Unity *cough*).

Big companies smooth out these blips by virtue of running bigger teams and bigger projects so the delays are easier to absorb.  Even then, it doesn't always result in deadlines not being missed or QC targets being missed.  However, for small companies, these issues really hit hard.

Now Squad have a history of releasing anyway rather than delaying to fix issues.  This has generally worked out because the PC based players are much more used to small software developers.  Console gamers, due, I suspect, to the more complex release cycle imposed on them by the platform vendors, are more used to dealing with larger companies and so are a lot less forgiving.  They're simply not used to the hobbyist aspect of gaming.

[Snark]

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

I'm not a software developer. I run a small shop. Unlike game companies, angry customers can indeed show up at my door with pitchforks and torches. So Rule #1 is "Don't scam customers. Ever.", Rule #2 is "If something can break, warn the customer beforehand" and Rule #3 is "If something can break, maybe is better loose the sale than risk an actual customer with pitchfork and torches or, maybe worse, a lawyer"

That all makes sense.  However-- and please correct me if I'm wrong, here, perhaps I'm reading too much into your statement-- it kind of sounds as if you're somehow suggesting that you're following good business practices that Squad isn't.  Which would be an unfounded and, IMO, unfair speculation.

Rule #1:  don't scam customers.

Well, of course.  Who wouldn't agree with that?  It's a total no-brainer... and if you're saying that Squad is "scamming" customers, citation please.

They offer a cute little computer game that gives many hours of entertainment for a fairly small outlay of money.  That's it.  That's all they offer.  That's what they're selling, in good faith, they're not trying to tell anyone that they're offering any more than that, and  that is indeed what people get.  Doesn't mean it's perfect, doesn't mean unexpected things can't go wrong, but they're selling a product and it's pretty clear that the overwhelming majority of customers are thrilled with it and are happy with the bargain they're getting.  How many hours have you played KSP?  Compared with how much money did you spend on it?  I don't know your answer, but in my case the answers are "thousands of hours" and "US $27", which is insanely good value for money.  How on earth is that a "scam"?

Rule #2:  if something can break, warn the customer beforehand.

Sure... but here's the deal:

All software can break.  ALL software.  Without exception.  That is the way it always has been, and that is the way it always will be, and everyone who uses a computer should understand that.

When I sell someone a car... I don't warn them:  "By the way, this won't run forever.  Eventually something's going to break and you're going to have to spend a bunch of money to have it repaired."  Because everyone knows that, and such a warning will be silly.

Now, having made the above statement, I can imagine the angry retort that someone could make, who has never written commercial software for a living and therefore doesn't understand how things work:  "Yeah, but if the car is a lemon and it's ALREADY BROKEN before you drive it off the lot, then the salesman is scamming you!"

The answer to that is:  software is different from cars.  Software is a lot more complicated than a car is.  It's pretty easy to test a car-- there's not much that the user can do with it, the controls are really simple.  A competent mechanic can give a car a thorough going-over in a few hours and pronounce "yes, this car's in good shape".  You can't do that with software.  The number of potential user interactions is so much ludicrously higher than with a car that it's mathematically impossible to test them all.  You hire testers, yes, and you try to catch and fix bugs, yes, but you can't catch them all, it's mathematically impossible, and that's why all software has bugs.

So I'm pretty hard pressed to see that Squad has somehow been lax or dishonest in not warning people "by the way, bugs are a thing, and all software has it."

Rule #3:  If something can break, maybe better lose the sale than risk an actual customer with pitchfork and torches or, maybe worse, a lawyer.

Fair 'nuff.  Again, perhaps I'm reading too much into what you're saying, but are you suggesting that Squad is somehow being lax or dishonest here?  If so, based on what evidence?

Are you saying that "nobody should ever sell any software, ever, because all software can break"?  I assume not.  That would be like saying "nobody should ever sell a car, ever, because all cars are capable of having mechanical problems."

Are you saying "it's better for Squad to defer selling the game rather than releasing it with bugs in it"?  If that's what you're saying, they already do that.  Every single KSP release. They don't just shove it out the door as soon as the devs step back from the keyboard.  They defer the heck out of releasing.  They go through a QA cycle.  Then they go through Experimentals.  Like any software company, they put a lot of hard work and time into trying to find problems so they can be fixed, before they release the thing.

Of course, that doesn't mean that they find all the problems, since software is a lot harder than an automobile, and unlike a car, you can't just hand a piece of software to a trained expert for a few hours and find all the problems.  It doesn't work that way.

 

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Now, please don't ever compare again people angry at an Internet forum with people angry at someone's doorstep.

Makes sense.  I've never run a small shop for a living, so of course I wouldn't presume to tell you what your business is like, or how you can best run it.

And I feel the same way.  Having spent a few decades producing commercial software for a living, I confess that I do become somewhat vexed (in case it's not obvious) at people who have never done it presuming that they know anything about it and are in a position to say how it should (or can) be done.  Thus posts such as this one.

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

0.23.5 was Early Access. You expect bugs at that point, that's why it's early access. You also expect new content.

1.0 is release.

So what are you saying?  Are you saying that when they came out with 1.0, they should have closed up shop and not released anything ever again?

Because I don't think most KSP players would like that.

If you're saying "there should be nothing but bug fixes after that" ... I don't think most KSP players would want that, either.  I don't know about you, but I like all this cool stuff that Squad keeps giving me for free.

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

You also, paraphrasing, claim enterprise customers demand quality while game customers accept excrements. I agree. And that allows game developers to sell excrements. Why not? excrements is cheap. Quality is not. It requires money. But as long as customers accept excrements, excrements is what they'll have. Why bother with expensive quality, if cheap excrements is acceptable?

Sigh.  No, that's not at all what I'm saying.  I'd suggest going back and reading my earlier post, since I go to a lot of trouble and paragraphs to explain that the situation is exactly the opposite of what you're saying here.

I'm saying:  Different customers have different requirements.

I'm not saying that enterprise customers have higher standards than game players.  I'm saying they have different standards.

Quality costs money, yes. So does releasing updates frequently.  So does implementing features.  So does doing anything at all with software.

KSP players have different (not lesser) requirements than Excel users.  Squad would have to be stupid to develop KSP the same way Excel is developed, and they would be doing their customers a grave disservice if they did so, and people would leave and Squad would go out of business.

You seem to think that "Squad is happy to turn out crap because they didn't bother spending any money."  Which is utter nonsense, or at least, a completely unfounded assertion. They have a certain budget to work with, there's no way around that, and they have to decide where to spend that budget, and QA is just one of the things that they have to invest in.  Unless you write software for a living, you're really not in a position to say.

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

And a game like KSP without the ability to save is excrements. And it's a scam. There is no way around it. We aren't talking about Gilly's ridiculous timewarp limit, or some exploit which allows for a kraken drive. We're talking about save games.

Yup.  And bugs happen.  Including bad ones.  Including bad ones that aren't always caught in time before shipping.  And that's what software is.

That doesn't mean it's a scam, it means it's software.  You seem to think that they said to themselves, "Hey!  Let's just blow off save games and deliberately sell something that we know does this.  Hahahahaha!"  Evidence please?

You think Squad likes that the saves are broken?

Horrible, gut-wrenchingly product-destroying bugs aren't necessarily any easier to find-- or any harder to happen-- than comparatively mild ones.  It's a fact of life for software development.

It's easy for someone who's never written software for a living to think "but that's obvious, they should have caught that."  And it's easy for someone who doesn't work at Squad and who has no idea what the actual truth of the matter is, to imagine all sorts of evil scenarios.

I don't work for Squad, so I don't have any more information than you do about what goes on inside there.  But I've been doing this (shipping software) for a living for a couple of decades, and what I can tell you is that this sort of thing can happen, and there are lots of ways it can happen, and lots of those ways are just bad luck and don't require anyone to be incompetent or evil.

So how about not assuming that they're incompetent or evil, when you have no expertise or knowledge whatsoever upon which to base such a claim?

 

 

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

I also disagree with Squad listening to their fan base. The game has been in development for years and interplanetary travel is still nearly impossible - or incredibly demanding - with stock tools. ... So no, Squad isn't listening to their fan base.

Nonsense.  Exactly the reverse:  Squad listens great to their fan base-- far more than any other software company I've ever seen.

Plenty of players go interplanetary.  I did it myself, in stock.  Is it challenging?  Sure.  That's what makes KSP fun.

Do lots of players think it's too hard?  Yes.  Do lots of players think it's great?  Yes.  Can't please everyone.

I'd find the claim that "Squad doesn't listen to players" a lot easier to swallow if I hadn't been on the forum the last few years and seen the actual developers jump into forum threads to respond to actual posts from real users.  Dozens of times.  It's astounding.  Try getting that from any other game company-- for that matter, any software company at all.  Squad listens to their fan base far more than any other software company I've ever seen.  They're batting that one out of the frickin' park.

 

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

The suggestions subforum is filled with thread after thread after thread of people suggesting a better career experience.

Well, sure.  There are hundreds of thousands of people playing KSP, but only a dozen or so writing it.

Again:   Please don't make assertions about how to write software if you have no idea what you're talking about.

Squad implements new features a lot.  These new features are ones that lots of fans eagerly await.  They're giving their fan base a lot of what they want.

They don't implement all the suggestions in the Suggestions forum because there isn't time.  Adding even a very small feature takes tons of time, and they have a very small staff; they simply can't do everything.  They have to draw the line and say "We're not going to implement that feature.  There's not enough time to do it right, and if we try to do it in the time available, we're going to screw it up.  So we'll skip it, or save it for later."  That's why, for example, they didn't include the new telemetry feature in 1.1-- they realized it wouldn't fit in the time available and that they needed to spend that time on other things instead.  And you know what?  They got yelled at by the fan base for leaving that out.  But it was the right decision.

On the one hand, here you're saying "Squad should implement more of the features that users suggest."   Which would mean cramming more feature work into the same staffing and the same budget, which would drive quality to crap.  On the other hand, you're also complaining about "there are too many bugs, they should spend more on that"-- which would mean abandoning feature work.  Which one do you want?  You can't have it both ways.

I'm not saying Squad's perfect, or that they never make mistakes... but I'd sure appreciate it if folks could think a bit before heaping criticism on something they aren't in any position to know anything about.

 

10 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Also, you may be well advised to read something about marketing. You don't argue with your customer's expectations. You try to fulfill them.

Given that I've been doing it for over twenty years, I do know something about selling software, but thanks for the suggestion. 

Yes, you try to fulfill customers' expectations.  That's what any software developer does.  It's certainly what Squad appears to be doing, based on my observations of them over the last couple of years.

Of course, there's the problem that what customers want is infinite features, for free, with zero bugs.  Which can't happen.

That means that it's simply impossible to do everything that everyone wants, and one has to pick and choose.  That's the really hard part of designing a software product.  Especially when you're a tiny company with a small staff and you really have to whittle things down.  Personally, I happen to think Squad's doing a good job of this, though of course opinions can differ.

Frankly, I'm impressed that Squad makes as much of an effort as it does to engage with the fan base here in the forums-- they get tons of abuse, all the time, and if I were in their shoes I'd frankly have to ask myself whether it's worth it.  To keep doing that seems to me to indicate a passionate dedication to customers, far beyond what I've seen from most software companies.

But that's just me. 

[Galileo]

I agree with everything @Snark wrote. I can't fathom how the squad team does it day in and day out,  merely trying to provide everyone with a game.  I look at ksp as a privilege not a right and I feel others see it the other way. I'm only grateful that this game was even conceived,  sparking my interest in space and science.  Nothing but gratitude from my end.  Give it time,  the console version will catch up,  I guarantee it. The pc game didn't become what it is over night either,  ya know. 

Also, 

Snarks finger tips are now wrapped in 2 layers of the thickest bandages one has ever seen.

RIP Snarks fingers tips. 

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Galileo

[Stargate525]

29 minutes ago, Galileo said:

I agree with everything @Snark wrote. I can't fathom how the squad team does it day in and day out,  merely trying to provide everyone with a game.  I look at ksp as a privilege not a right and I feel others see it the other way. I'm only grateful that this game was even conceived,  sparking my interest in space and science.  Nothing but gratitude from my end.  Give it time,  the console version will catch up,  I guarantee it. The pc game didn't become what it is over night either,  ya know.

I'm sorry, is this a charity or a product?

I presume you paid money for this game. Simpering gratitude does no one any good. The way you're saying this, you'd think we're talking about Doctors Without Borders.