Why is this game still on the market place?

[Galileo]

6 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

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.

No, I just keep things in perspective and understand its a game and a fairly new game on a console at that. And I don't let it ruin my day. Perhaps you've heard the saying :

"You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

You being salty isn't going to speed Squad up any. But if it makes you feel better,  than by all means.  

 

[Corona688]

 

28 minutes ago, Stargate525 said:

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.

Most of the gratitude comes from PC users for whom the game has been more-or-less working great for years and whom continue to receive updates for money already spent.   Someone once quipped, apparently serious, "You'd think they were making the console port JUST for the money".  I'm not sure what he thought they were making it for, certainly not the joy of it, that's not how anyone would describe a closed hardware programming experience.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[Corona688]

Nonetheless, this is v0.0.0 of a brand-new product from a small indie-house developer on platforms which invented the term "savefile corruption" decades before KSP existed.  The difference between then and now, here and there, is

a) The existence of something besides a corporate wall to complain to.

b) The ability to backup your saves without buying squirrely electronics off of ebay.

c) The ability to fix bugs, at all, ever.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Galileo said:

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

RIP Snarks fingers tips.

Heh, thanks for the thoughts, but they're already well-armored with calluses.  You don't last long in software development if you have a thin skin. 

Personal anecdote, of interest only to folks who may care who I am and why I do what I do, in spoiler section because it's not directly relevant to the argument here.

Spoiler

If I seem impassioned about all this... well, it's because I am.  It's personal for me.  If I seem sympathetic to Squad, it's because I've been there and done that, and have an idea of just how hard it is to do what they're doing.

And it's not just that software in general is hard (though it is).  Doing software at a small company is even harder.  I've worked at companies both big and small.  Working at a little company can be scary; you're essentially doing a trapeze act without a safety net, and there's nothing to catch you if you fall.  It requires guts, and determination, and a willingness to take risks.  I mean personal risks, far beyond what users of the software deal with.  If a disgruntled player gets a broken product, fine, they're out a few bucks, they move on with life.  If you work at a company that ships broken crap, then the company goes out of business and you lose your job and you have to worry about how you're going to pay the rent, buy groceries, support your family.

These days, I don't work at a tiny company.  I'm reasonably ensconced in the fortress of a major corporation, and I like it that way, because now I'm a middle-aged risk-avoider whose priority is supporting IRL responsibilities and looking ahead to save for a retirement and old age that's a lot closer-- scarily closer-- than it used to be.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I don't have the guts to work at a little company.  And even when I was a whole lot younger (and therefore omniscient, immortal, and invulnerable), I still felt nervous and jumpy when I was working at a little place.  Doing acrobatics without a safety net bugs me.  I'm just not temperamentally cut out to handle those kinds of risk levels.

So the folks who do walk that path, have my frank admiration.

I've seen a lot of companies make software, both from the inside (as an employee) and from the outside (as a customer).  I've seen good software development, and bad software development, and I have a pretty good idea of what both of those look like.  I know what "bad software" and "bad development" attitudes look like.  And Squad isn't it.

KSP has given me a lot.  I've gotten more hours of sheer bliss out of this game than I know how to express.  It's a quirky and downright inspired game that really shows the passion and dedication of its tiny staff of developers.  In over a third of a century of avid gameplaying, no other game has caught and held my imagination the way KSP has.  And the KSP community in these forums is a thing of beauty-- so much nicer than the toxic stew that engulfs so much of the internet, which is why I agreed to become a moderator when they asked me (it's certainly not something I sought out).

All of that is thanks to Squad.  I haven't seen any other company that's delivered such wonderful stuff to its customers for so long, and maintained such close engagement, at such a modest price.  They've given me so much, which is why I care.  It's not like I get paid for any of this stuff, I don't work for Squad, I don't "owe" them anything.  I say all this stuff on my own dime.

I get to play with this gem that is KSP because Squad Did It Right™, and keeps on Doing It Right™.  Not only are they "doing it right"... but to deliver so much of a game with such a tiny team requires taking some remarkable risks.  Great, big, existential, potentially-lose-everyone's-job kinds of risks.  If the folks at Squad had "played it safe", KSP wouldn't even exist.  Or if it did, it would be a small, dim, dull thing that would never have captured my imagination and ignited my spirit the way it has.

We have KSP because Squad, unlike me, had and continues to have the intestinal fortitude to go out on a limb, time and time again, and take significant personal risks to try to build something insanely great.  Those risks are the price of admission.  And when you have to take risks all the time, it's guaranteed that you're going to stumble and fall and break a leg occasionally... which is why I'm willing to cut Squad plenty of slack when they occasionally drop the ball.  I'd rather have a fantastic game with an occasional dropped ball, than have no game at all.

(Yes, the "broken save games" issue on the console is one of those bone-crunchers.  I'm not trying to gloss that over.  It's just one of those occasional, very unfortunate misses that will inevitably happen from time to time.)

So... when I see someone who knows nothing whatsoever about what it actually takes to produce software... and they choose to dump on Squad for supposedly "doing it wrong"... and the company they're dumping on is one that has poured years of passion and effort, at considerable personal risk, to give that customer this wonderful thing that has given the customer hundreds or thousands of hours of entertainment for a mere pittance... well, it grinds my gears.

I try to be polite about it.  I do sympathize with the gamer's point of view-- although I've been a software developer for over twenty years, I've been an avid game player for over thirty, so I totally get where the gamer is coming from.  I am one.  I also understand that it's really not obvious to someone who doesn't do software for a living just how astonishingly hard it is.  Yes, software is hard, but it's not obvious to the player.  It's not the player's fault that they're clueless about software development, or even that they're clueless about how clueless they are.  Everybody is clueless about software development, except the folks who have actually done it.

I also can't really blame console players for being truly enraged about this situation, because this is where they came in.  They haven't had the benefit of all the years of great KSP gaming on the PC leading up to this point.  They're entering the KSP world and right there, immediately, is this horrible game-ruining problem for them.  It's not the console players' fault that they happen to just be spectacularly unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They have a bad experience from the get-go, so it's totally understandable to be angry in that situation.

So I do not mean to belittle any user's problems with KSP or with any other software, and I hope folks don't read what I write that way.  If you've got a game-breaking problem that ruins your enjoyment of the game, by all means complain about it!  You're the expert about what makes you happy or unhappy, and neither I nor anyone else has any competence (or right) to judge that.

But that's all you get to complain about.  "The game does this, and I don't like it."  As soon as you step outside that simple statement (which is within your expertise), and move on to criticize how developers develop software (which isn't... it really isn't)... well then, them's fightin' words, and I take that very personally.

So that's why I keep getting up on a soapbox and pontificating about all this.  I'm hoping (perhaps naively) that I may be able to reach someone, and give them some inkling of what it takes to produce software, and why it is that things are the way they are.  That yes, it's unfortunate that you have <problem>, and you're perfectly within your rights to be unhappy about it, but there are reasons for that-- reasons that don't necessarily involve anyone trying to rip you off, reasons that are often unavoidable.  I'm under no illusions that I'll be able to straighten everyone out, or even that I'll be able to sway very many people.  But if I can enlighten even just a few about how all this works, then I've served my purpose and I'm happy.

 

[juanml82]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

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.

 

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.

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.

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.

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?

But we aren't talking about some minor, unavoidable bugs. We aren't discussing some odd thing that happens when flying into the Moholes, or some quirk if you want to make a 200m tall rocket.

We are talking about being unable to save. That's game-breaking. That's the kind of stuff that happens in a demo to entice people to pay for the final product, not what happens once customers pay for the final product. Once that happens, the company selling the product has to make a commercial decision. Do they warn, clearly and without any misleading, their prospective buyers before they purchase? Do they offer refunds, without any time limit, until the issue is solved? Do they retire the product from the market until savegames are functioning again? Or do they continue to cash in?

The latter one makes money, at least in the short term and, unfortunately, suffers from little backlash. Part of that backlash is their customer's attitude, part maybe the legal framework. And it's a scam. And I don't care whether people working at Squad likes it. KSP developers aren't my friends. Someone at Squad decided to keep selling a broken product as if it isn't. Whether they don't care or they can't sleep at night, they are doing it. And since they aren't my friends, I don't have any reason to wonder about their feelings. Why should I?

Also, I don't look at any market thinking "Ohhh, the manufacturers are passionate, so they'll sure do their best". I see a market and I see supply, demand and legal frameworks. If a company, any company, can get away with increasing their profits by maintaining their sales while keeping their costs down, they'll do it. Why shouldn't they?

Quote

 

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.

 

Having a forum and listening to customers isn't the same thing.

Quote

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

So? I paid for something. At some point, the company making it decided it was a final product. Why should I care about the internal workings of that company? I'm a customer, not an investor, an associate or a friend.

Quote

 

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.

 

What I'm saying are two things:

First, released games aren't ongoing betas. Squad can very well finish to fix the worse bugs, announce "That's it, that's the finished game. Come back in a few years for KSP 2" and there is nothing anyone could complain about. Games aren't developed forever and, as someone who continues to play Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri from time to time, that doesn't mean it means it's a bad game.

Second, listening to customers mean implementing the features the customers want, if they are to implement features, that's it. No, they don't have to implement all suggestions. But if there are a lot of suggestions about adding KAC and dV and TWR readouts and we don't even have official word about adding KAC after Squad hired the developer who made that mod, well, it's hard to argue they listen to their customers as opposed to having a suggestion subforum. Ditto for simple tweaks like the timewarp limits, specially around Gilly. That issue has never been acknowledged.

Quote

 

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. 

 

I'm not talking about zero bugs. I'm talking about not selling games with game-breaking bugs like the inability to save the game.

[severedsolo]

42 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

So? I paid for something. At some point, the company making it decided it was a final product. Why should I care about the internal workings of that company? I'm a customer, not an investor, an associate or a friend.

Wait... so you are saying "Devs should implement more player suggested features" while also saying "this is a final product."? The two things are mutually exclusive. New features == more bugs. Finished product == less bugs (or at least bugfixes only). Choose.

Besides which, Snark is right, these things happen. It's unfortunate that it happened at the console release. It's VERY unfortunate that this is alot of peoples first look at what is truly an awesome game, by an awesome developer who USUALLY get it right, even if they do rush a little sometimes. (althought I'd point out that's usually because we, the players are getting impatient).

If I had bought the console version and this issue was affecting me (and I was going to, thankfully the European PS4 delay actually saved me) - I'd be kicking and screaming about getting a refund too. As I said earlier on, I think the OP is in his rights to ask for one, and if it were up to Squad, I'm sure he'd get one. It's not though, it's up to the PSN/XB equivalent. (but probably won't get one due to the below)

42 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

We are talking about being unable to save. That's game-breaking. That's the kind of stuff that happens in a demo to entice people to pay for the final product, not what happens once customers pay for the final product. Once that happens, the company selling the product has to make a commercial decision. Do they warn, clearly and without any misleading, their prospective buyers before they purchase? Do they offer refunds, without any time limit, until the issue is solved? Do they retire the product from the market until savegames are functioning again? Or do they continue to cash in?

Is this issue actually affecting EVERY console player? If it was, I would say then yes, they should probably withdraw it. Somehow I doubt this is the case though, as the Welcome and Gameplay Questions forums are full of console players... if it were that game breaking, I'm sure they wouldn't be.

So more likely, the issue is affecting a small percentage of players. I cannot think of a single game that has not had launch day issues for a small percentage (but maybe a significant raw number) of players. I cannot think of a single instance where the company has done what you suggested (Sim City excluded, but I believe that affected everybody).... so no, assuming it's not every/most console player, then why should they? It's an industry norm. Buyer beware.

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by severedsolo

[juanml82]

2 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Wait... so you are saying "Devs should implement more player suggested features" while also saying "this is a final product."? The two things are mutually exclusive. New features == more bugs. Finished product == less bugs (or at least bugfixes only). Choose.

I'm saying two different things. First, that Squad has no commitment to continue to develop the game, other than fixing the major remaining bugs (namely, the landing legs/wheels issues and all the console issues).

Second, that I disagree that Squad is listening to its customers, because I believe the development path they've taken - which they don't have to take, but they did anyways - doesn't follow or acknowledge what's usually suggested in the proper subforum.

Quote

 

Besides which, Snark is right, these things happen. It's unfortunate that it happened at the console release. It's VERY unfortunate that this is alot of peoples first look at what is truly an awesome game, by an awesome developer who USUALLY get it right, even if they do rush a little sometimes. (althought I'd point out that's usually because we, the players are getting impatient).

If I had bought the console version (and I was going to, thankfully the European PS4 delay actually saved me) - I'd be kicking and screaming about getting a refund too. As I said earlier on, I think the OP is in his rights to ask for one, and if it were up to Squad, I'm sure he'd get one. It's not though, it's up to the PSN/XB equivalent.

Is this issue actually affecting EVERY console player? If it was, I would say then yes, they should probably withdraw it. Somehow I doubt this is the case though, as the Welcome and Gameplay Questions forums are full of console players... if it were that game breaking, I'm sure they wouldn't be.

So more likely, the issue is affecting a small percentage of players. I cannot think of a single game that has not had launch day issues for a small percentage (but maybe a significant raw number) of players. I cannot think of a single instance where the company has done what you suggested (Sim City excluded, but I believe that affected everybody).... so no, assuming it's not every/most console player, then why should they? It's an industry norm. Buyer beware.

 

And I think industry norms should be higher. And that backlash for releasing such a failed product should prevent companies from continue to sell it until it's fixed.

[Corona688]

You can save, it just doesn't always work yet.

It's difficult to express just how wide the gulf between PC and console/phone is to non-programmers.  They may look the same, they may even act the same sometimes, but when you take a look at how they work you're comparing tractors to smowmobiles.

Tractor:  Boring, modular, with infinite expansion and towing options.  There's easy access to the engine, parts available anywhere with 'agri' in its name, and your neighbor knows how to fix them.  The wimpiest tractor will outpull the strongest snowmobile.

Snowmobile:  Custom-made, difficult to upgrade, not that useful but fun.  It needs special Japanese fuses, metric wrenches, and a contortionist for basic repairs, factory technicians for anything worse.  The wimpiest tractor will outpull the strongest snowmobile.

It is really difficult to debug console software.  Niceties such log files and traces you'd expect on PC really don't exist on console -- it's an environment so basic it has almost no concept of 'file' to begin with and lots of other limits in memory, speed, networking, and storage space.  You can't really see what's going on or track anything.

These sort of problems are pretty normal for a from-PC console port.  Unity is the only thing which has made it possible at all.

[severedsolo]

Just now, juanml82 said:

I disagree that Squad is listening to its customers, because I believe the development path they've taken - which they don't have to take, but they did anyways - doesn't follow or acknowledge what's usually suggested in the proper subforum.

Ah, that makes more sense. Although, I'd like to point out that they have absolutely zero obligation to implement all/any of the suggested features. I do see the point you are trying to make - "How can they say they listen, if they don't do features in the suggestions forum". I'd counter that by pointing out that a) 99% of players (myself included) have literally no idea what is involved in implementing xyz feature (or even if it's possible).

In a strange way though, they do listen. Most of the new features implemented have been mods, in one form or another. This kinda leads back to what I was saying earlier, it's been proven it's popular, and there is demand for it (and it's clearly technically possible). Not what you were hoping for I know, but it's something.

5 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

And I think industry norms should be higher. And that backlash for releasing such a failed product should prevent companies from continue to sell it until it's fixed.

I won't argue there, but once again it all comes down to metrics. 1% of customers have an issue due to a unique setup/bad luck. Unfortunately xyz software company didnt realise this because they couldn't test in that scenario. Should they really be punished? What's the threshold? 25% 50%? Who makes that decision? 1 million affected customers, could still be 0.5% of the total install base.

However, i agree that something should be done about crappy buggy releases. This is the problem with digital content. In the old days you'd never get away with releasing a crappy buggy day one release and go "ah we'll patch it in a couple of days". What came on the disk was what you got, and you'd get slammed in the reviews.

It's not Squad's fault it's like that though. They do MUCH better than most. Really, the distributors need to do a better job of enforcing it, but they are in the pockets of EA Ubisoft and such.

[Corona688]

36 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

However, i agree that something should be done about crappy buggy releases. This is the problem with digital content. In the old days you'd never get away with releasing a crappy buggy day one release and go "ah we'll patch it in a couple of days". What came on the disk was what you got, and you'd get slammed in the reviews.

First, you're still talking about PC games, a much more forgiving programming and development environment.  Now cartridge games, if a publisher messed up on those, they were in trouble.

Second, games and game demos definitely had bugs -- and patches -- in the bad old days before easy internet downloads.  You'd get them by BBS, get a copy from a friend who got it from BBS, or (if the publisher really screwed up) get it by mail.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[cantab]

32 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

First, you're still talking about PC games, a much more forgiving programming and development environment.  Now cartridge games, if a publisher messed up on those, they were in trouble.

Second, games and game demos definitely had bugs -- and patches -- in the bad old days before easy internet downloads.  You'd get them by BBS, get a copy from a friend who got it from BBS, or (if the publisher really screwed up) get it by mail.

And now you're still talking about PC games. Console games from the NES through to the PS2 eras couldn't really be patched after release. The game developers had to make the first release free of serious bugs, and they did. Now I don't believe game developers nowadays can't make a first release free of serious bugs, not least because some still do, it's simply that many developers won't because their owners feel that the release now, patch later (or even never) approach will make bigger profits.

This isn't a problem particular to Squad, it's in the whole game industry. And it's not going to change as long as customers keep tolerating it, and customers will keep tolerating it because it's become the new normal.

Edited August 24, 2016 by cantab

[damerell]

1 hour ago, severedsolo said:

However, i agree that something should be done about crappy buggy releases. This is the problem with digital content. In the old days you'd never get away with releasing a crappy buggy day one release and go "ah we'll patch it in a couple of days". What came on the disk was what you got, and you'd get slammed in the reviews.

Except when you didn't. Jet Set Willy couldn't be completed as-released, which none of the glowing reviews noticed. Not an isolated exception, either - Superior Software used to market their games as "playtested to completion", and that was a real selling point. Anyone who thinks the "old days" were better has got rose-tinted nostalgia glasses: QA do make mistakes now but back then it was literally possible to buy a game [1] which no-one - developer, publisher, or reviewer - had ever actually verified could be finished and never get a squeak of warning _from_ the reviews.

[1] of a kind that one might reasonably expect to be finishable.

[Talos]

Squad is doing the best they can to make the console versions run as best as possible. If you want to be angry and complain about the console version, buy a PC and be done with it.

[nascarlaser1]

18 hours ago, cantab said:

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.

I am new to ksp (can't even land on the mun) and I don't fiddle with the wheels at all. I just use them. I'm not using 1.1.3, but I have either 1.1-1.2 (don't know which) and I have never had any issue with the regular wheels. I don't even know how to fiddle with them, so I can't. I just strap them onto my plane or rover, turn off the torque on the latter, and use said vehicle.

[Corona688]

2 hours ago, cantab said:

And now you're still talking about PC games. Console games from the NES through to the PS2 eras couldn't really be patched after release.

And had bugs, some of them infamous.

Quote

This isn't a problem particular to Squad, it's in the whole game industry. And it's not going to change as long as customers keep tolerating it, and customers will keep tolerating it because it's become the new normal.

Yes, everything should just be perfect, then there'd never be a need for patches.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[cantab]

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

And had bugs, some of them infamous.

Examples? Because from my memory not many console games in the can't-patch era had serious "game breaking" bugs or were as crash-happy as some KSP releases (on PC) have been. The "well known" bugs of that era are usually fairly minor glitches that are only widely known because they can be exploited to gain an advantage.

[Corona688]

A really famous example would be battletoads, a game a completely unwinnable as released.

Freeze glitches in Mario games which Nintendo called "bowser's time trap".

And lastly google "save corruption".  Kerbal Space Program did not invent it.  There's a reason PC readers for Playstation memory cards were a popular third party addon.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[Snark]

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

But we aren't talking about some minor, unavoidable bugs. We aren't discussing some odd thing that happens when flying into the Moholes, or some quirk if you want to make a 200m tall rocket.

We are talking about being unable to save. That's game-breaking.

Well, yes.  It's a really bad bug.  I'm sure they're working really hard to get it fixed as soon as possible, as any responsible software producer would do.  Bad bugs happen sometimes.  So?

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Once that happens, the company selling the product has to make a commercial decision. Do they warn, clearly and without any misleading, their prospective buyers before they purchase? Do they offer refunds, without any time limit, until the issue is solved? Do they retire the product from the market until savegames are functioning again? Or do they continue to cash in?

Or they work really hard to fix the problem and release a fix as soon as possible, so that everyone-- including the people who have already paid money for the product and been bitten by the bug-- gets a better experience.

As far as warnings, refunds, retiring from the market, etc. are concerned:  you're taking an awful lot for granted there.  You're assuming that they actually have the legal authority and technical ability to do any of that, which is far from clear to me.  I've heard that the console software production pipeline is a tortuous one, and I don't think anyone outside Squad is in a position to say what they are technically or legally able to do, here.  Assuming that they do in fact produce a fix and release that-- which we know they actually can do, since they've said they're doing it-- then that seems like a reasonable path forward to me.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

And it's a scam.

Evidence please.  Some evidence that this is a deliberate, dishonest money grab, and not just a really unfortunate and unforeseen technical accident that folks are working really hard to fix.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

And I don't care whether people working at Squad likes it. KSP developers aren't my friends. Someone at Squad decided to keep selling a broken product as if it isn't. Whether they don't care or they can't sleep at night, they are doing it. And since they aren't my friends, I don't have any reason to wonder about their feelings. Why should I?

Sure, you're entitled to take that approach if you like.  No one, myself included, is trying to convince you otherwise.

You'll note that at no point have I said how you should feel.  Or even that you shouldn't complain about a problem that affects you.

My point is simply, don't make unfounded assertions about why or how things happen in a certain way, if you don't actually have the faintest clue about what you're talking about.

Say "I hate this game I got" all you like.  Say "I'm really angry at Squad" all you like.  Say "I have a poor opinion of Squad as a company" all you like.

But saying "Squad is dishonest" or "Squad didn't try to fix any bugs" or similar factual assertions is simply talking smack without any basis in reality or knowledge.  All of my explanations about how this kind of stuff can happen isn't trying to get you to sympathize or excuse Squad.  I'm simply trying to do you the courtesy of demonstrating why your various assertions are unfounded, instead of just saying "Nuh uh!" and leaving it at that.

I totally understand that you might want to believe that Squad is dishonest, because you're justifiably hopping mad with the product you've received.  But wanting to believe that something is true doesn't make it true.

To sum up:  I'm simply suggesting that one should argue what one knows, not what one doesn't.

 

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

If a company, any company, can get away with increasing their profits by maintaining their sales while keeping their costs down, they'll do it. Why shouldn't they?

Because they'd have to be criminally stupid to do so.  They'd irk their userbase to the point that no one wants to buy their crap, and then they'll go out of business.  Certainly there have (briefly) existed companies that have successfully aspired to that level of daftness, but I haven't seen any evidence yet that Squad is one.  The fact that they're still around after five years, and KSP is still a going concern, and that lots of players like the game, a lot, seem to argue against it.

Again, your statement is chock full of unfounded assumptions.  You're assuming that this is a deliberate ploy to save costs at the expense of customers.  You have no evidence whatsoever of that.  Bugs happen.  It's unavoidable.  Sometimes bad bugs.  They become more likely to happen, and less likely to get caught, when a company is venturing into new territory (e.g. shipping on a platform they've never shipped on before).  You're also assuming that the money that they supposedly saved on QA went straight into their pockets and they laughed all the way to the bank, which is another completely unfounded accusation without a shred of evidence.

Is the scenario you propose technically possible?  Sure.  However, my observation of (and participation in) the industry over the past couple of decades is that the sort of behavior you're suggesting is pretty rare.  The overwhelming majority of companies that hit problems do so in good faith, and are guilty of poor judgment calls at worst, simple bad luck at best.  And the very tiny minority of genuine bad apples are pretty glaringly obvious-- they establish a track record of blatant red-flag warning signs over time, which is something Squad hasn't done.  All of their behavior over the last many years has been consistent with a company that puts a lot of importance on being a good-faith actor and trying hard to make something great.  It would be bizarrely out of character for them to pull the sort of money grab you're proposing, so it seems pretty darn unlikely to me.

I've already explained how software development works.  Search my earlier post for the phrase "zero-sum game".  They could have spent more time on QA, but then they would have had to spend less time on other really important stuff that the KSP community loves and demands, and would have gotten crucified for doing so.  And that would have been a virtual certainty of alienating and angering their fan base, as opposed to the wild-card possibility that a total gamebreaker bug like this could pop up.  So sure, hindsight's wonderful, but in the real world where nobody has a crystal ball, they may very well have made the right decision given the information available at the time.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Having a forum and listening to customers isn't the same thing.

You're right.  However, it's blatantly obvious that the folks at Squad do read the forums.  They jump into threads and participate all the time.

It's also clear that they listen to their fans.  The fans wanted planets, and they got that.  The fans wanted more rocket parts, and they got that.  The fans wanted career mode, and they got that.  The fans wanted reentry heat and better aero, and they got those.  The fans wanted mining, they got that.  The list goes on.  Every major feature that Squad has rolled out has been met with screams of enthusiastic delight from the many, many KSP fans who wanted that thing.  Just read the hype train threads, the responses to the devnotes.

Of course, you'll point out that there are plenty of other players who are unhappy because they didn't get the feature they want, or because they don't like the implementation of the feature they got.  Naturally so.  Since different people want different things, it's physically impossible to please them all.

I can't think of any other software company I've ever seen that is more responsive to the fans than Squad has been, and frankly (speaking as a developer myself) I'm hard-pressed to see how it would be physically possible for them to be any more responsive.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Squad can very well finish to fix the worse bugs, announce "That's it, that's the finished game. Come back in a few years for KSP 2" and there is nothing anyone could complain about.

Not complain?!  Are you kidding?  The forums would erupt.  The sky would bleed.  That may be what you want, personally... but it's not what I want, it's not what tons of users in the forum want, and Squad is getting dinged all the time for "why didn't <my personal pet feature> get added to <latest release>?" and people kvetching about how the game is "unfinished".  Heck, when HarvesteR left, there were users having conniptions over the merest imagined hint that maybe "the end is near" (which, thankfully for most of us, it doesn't appear to be).

Again, I'm having trouble figuring out just what you want-- first you accuse them of not listening to the players for implementing all the various suggestions, now you're saying they should just shut down (against the wishes of most of the KSP community) and not do any more work on it ever?  Those are diametrically opposite things.  Can't have both.

Sure, they could do that.  Someday they'll have to turn out the lights on KSP, I don't think anyone believes they're still gonna be cranking on it ten years from now.  But everything I've seen in the forums tells me that the overwhelming majority of forum users really like that Squad is actively working on it, and are living in dread of the day that the lights go out.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Second, listening to customers mean implementing the features the customers want

Yup!  Good thing they've been doing exactly that for years, and are continuing to do so, then, huh?

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

No, they don't have to implement all suggestions.

Great!  Glad they don't "have to", since it's physically impossible and no reasonable person could expect that.  Glad we're on the same page.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

But if there are a lot of suggestions about adding KAC and dV and TWR readouts and we don't even have official word about adding KAC after Squad hired the developer who made that mod, well, it's hard to argue they listen to their customers as opposed to having a suggestion subforum. Ditto for simple tweaks like the timewarp limits, specially around Gilly. That issue has never been acknowledged.

Okay, now you've confused me.  You just directly contradicted your previous sentence.  You say they don't have to implement everything, then in practically the same breath you're complaining that they're not implementing everything?

Well, okay, you didn't actually say that they have to implement everything.  You just said, in effect, "they don't listen to their player base because they didn't implement <specific features that I want them to implement>."

Since when does "Squad doesn't implement the specific features that juanml82 wants" mean the same thing as "Squad doesn't listen to their player base at all?"

They've got a big player base.  There are features that a lot of players want that they haven't implemented, because they can't implement everything.  There are other features that lots of players want that they have implemented.  Unless you have specific numbers of exactly how many players want which features-- which you don't-- then you're in no position to say that they "don't listen to their users."  They listen plenty, and there are abundant examples of them listening to their players, consistently, for years.

They have to pick and choose.  The most you can say is that their choices happen not to be what you, personally, would have done.  Which is simply a statement about your tastes, not about Squad's user-friendliness.

8 hours ago, juanml82 said:

I'm not talking about zero bugs. I'm talking about not selling games with game-breaking bugs like the inability to save the game.

Sigh.  I'm sorry, maybe the fact that I do this for a living all the time makes me not realize that what's glaringly obvious to me, as a developer, may not be so obvious to people who don't actually work in the industry.  Apologies if I haven't communicated clearly.

Here's a fact about software development:  You don't get to choose the bugs.

Bad bugs aren't any more or less likely than mild ones.  A one-character typo in a file somewhere might mean a mild grammatical mistake in a dialog box if it happens in one place, but a game-crasher if it happens in a different place.  It's all the same to the computer.

Every bug has a particular trigger condition that sets it off.  Either you get lucky and your testing process happens to trigger the condition-- in which case you see the bug-- or you don't-- in which case you don't see the bug.  Doesn't matter how bad the bug is:  if you don't trigger it, it's invisible.  The fact that it's hellaciously horrible doesn't mean that it emits some sort of radioactive glow that calls attention to itself.

Here's what producing software looks like:

1. Write a bunch of code.
2. Do a bunch of tests, designed to try to exercise lots of areas of the code.
3. Find bugs.
4. Fix them.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 a few more times.  Keep finding fewer and fewer bugs on each repetition, a kind of exponential decay.
6. Eventually you get to a point of diminishing returns where you're spending lots of money and finding hardly any bugs.
7. Hope like hell there aren't any real bone-crushing horrible bugs left that you happened not to catch.
8. Ship it.

That's it.  You don't get to pick which bugs slip through your net, nor do you get to pick how bad they are.  The only knob you get to turn is "how much total QA do you do"... but even there, you're constrained by the fact that, first, "more QA" comes at the cost of other development tasks that are also important, and, second, no matter how much you do, there's still going to be the "hope like hell" element in step #7.  There's luck involved.

I've been trying to come up with an analogy for what QA-testing software for bugs is like.  Here's what I've come up with; sorry if it's a bit contrived, but it's the best I can do.  Ever seen any of the movies in the Aliens franchise?  The QA cycle is like this:  You're a beleaguered space marine stranded on a dangerous planet filled to the brim with voracious aliens that want to chew your face off.  You're alone, and you're in pitch black darkness, and you know that a swarm of them is probably charging you right now.  You have a machine gun so you start blindly spraying bullets.  You can't actually target them, since you can't see them-- the only way to know where one's located is if you happen to get lucky enough to hit one.  All you can really do is try to lay down your machine-gun spray in an orderly grid so you try to cover as much area as you can.  And try to put enough bullets out there that you hope you've gotten all the really bad ones.  But there's no way to be sure to get everything.  There's not even any way to know whether you've gotten them all, i.e. there's no way to know that "you're done".  All you can do is notice that "hmm, I don't seem to be hitting as many of them any more", and eventually you run out of bullets.  And then you hope like hell that the few you've missed are small enough that they can't actually bite you in half.

If you missed an innocuous one or a really lethal one... they're both equally easy to miss.

If the console port were totally snowed under a crushing load of hundreds of bugs, then yeah, you'd have a point-- you could make a convincing case that their QA process must have been woefully inadequate.

But that's not what I've been hearing.  Most of the woe I've been hearing has been this one, single issue.  And there's really no way to prevent a single wild-card bug from sneaking in.  It's a crap-shoot.  It's possible to have a pretty thorough QA process and miss a bad bug, just as it's possible to live a healthy lifestyle and exercise right and eat right and still get really unlucky and get cancer.  Because nobody can predict the genesis of a single cancer cell, any more than it's possible to predict a single bug.

Sometimes bad luck just happens.

I'm not saying that that's necessarily the case here.  I have no idea what Squad's or FTE's QA process looked like.  Was it great?  Was it shoddy?  There's just not enough evidence to tell.  I'm sure you think there is, but if you're basing that on a single bug slipping through, without any knowledge of what they did to try to prevent that sort of thing, or how the bug actually got there, or what the technical nature of it is... well, "don't know" means "don't know".

[Bandus]

@Snark - I keep reading through this thread and thinking of something I want to add to it, then I get to another one of your posts and find you've already said it eloquently!

[Just Jim]

20 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.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this statement is just bugging the crap out of me, and if I get into trouble for what I'm going to say, then so be it.

First off, Squad does listen... trust me. I pm and bug the crap out of the moderators and/or DEV's all the time when they're on here. In fact @sal_vager must cringe when he sees I've sent him a pm with another question or problem... And they are amazing at listening and helping if and when the can.

And to say they don't listen because you can't get to another planet is ridiculous! Going interplanetary with a stock craft is SUPER easy!  And NO, I'm not using Engineer or Mechjeb or any of those mod tools. I prefer doing it the hard and fun way!!!

For example, all of these are stock, made by me, and can easily get to the other planets:
 

Spoiler

 

 

If you can't build an interplanetary ship, then I suggest you watch some tutorials, improve your ship building skills, and not try to pin it on Squad!!!

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by Just Jim

[Corona688]

I blame tutorials for a lot of anger actually, particularly in inspiring the idea you can load someone else's craft and be an expert, as if building the craft is all it's about.  Blaming the game isn't always warranted, especially when the things you're trying to do are actually hard.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Corona688

[Just Jim]

11 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

I blame tutorials for a lot of anger actually, particularly in inspiring the idea you can load someone else's craft and be an expert, as if building the craft is all it's about.  Blaming the game isn't always warranted, especially when the things you're trying to do are actually hard.

Oh wait... if you were referring to my last comment, I should have been more specific. I meant watching good YouTube tutorials, not playing the ones in the game.  My bad.

[Corona688]

Just now, Just Jim said:

Oh wait... if you were referring to my last comment, I should have been more specific. I meant watching good YouTube tutorials, not playing the ones in the game.  My bad.

It's not about either kind of tutorial, it's the attitude one takes to the game.

[Just Jim]

7 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

It's not about either kind of tutorial, it's the attitude one takes to the game.

I'm not exactly sure I'm following you. Personally my KSP attitude is the harder the better, but that's just me. 

[juanml82]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

(snip)

Several issues: you're approaching this as an (aggravated) software developer. I'm not coming to this issue from the standpoint of software development. I'm coming to this issue from a business standpoint.

Squad decided to port the game to consoles, outsourcing part of the job, and they ended up with a severely faulted product. I don't think this is up for discussion at this point. How did it happen, how to fix it, how long it takes, that's not relevant to the business - not development, business - decision I'm questioning. The decision is this: "The product we are selling is severely faulty. What do we do about it?"

If the decision is "We sell it anyways and pretend there is nothing gamebreaking on it" then you'll face complains. And selling a game with gamebreaking bugs without warning the customer beforehand is the very definition of a scam. That Squad and so many other developers get away with it speaks bad of the gaming market. If I were to take a similar decision in my business, I probably wouldn't be able to get away with it - my reputation would suffer, which would lead to customers choosing to buy from my competitors, and I may very well be sued - as I should.

 

Second, KSP is not a us$ 1 iPhone app. It's usually at us$ 40 and dips around us$ 25 during sales. That's 33% less than AAA game. And, contrary to AAA games, Squad expends a lot less in salaries, in part because they hire a much smaller development team and that team is based on Mexico, which has lower salaries than the USA (then again, I wonder how much AAA games are outsourced to India and other cheaper countries). So they get 66% of the gross revenue and far lower costs. How much? Well, it's not our business to know - after all, that part I wrote about not being Squad friends, investors or associates also means Squad's business isn't my own. But I don't think Squad is operating at loss, nor develops KSP as a hobby nor is a charity. They have what it seems to be a good business model.

What they need to do is to crank up sales as much as they can hiring as few people as they can - that doesn't mean they'll only hire two people, of course, but it does mean that keeping costs down mean keeping the team small. That's common business sense. That means extensive QA increases costs, it means delaying launches increases financial costs, as the surge of purchases when the game is released for a particular console gets delayed, and if they can get away with selling it while keeping the internal QA team small and debugging while customers are already buying, they'll do it. It's common business sense - if they can get away with it, that's it.

Third, as I've explained above, the moment KSP became a released game didn't just meant "Hey, we can now port to consoles". It means development can finish. They aren't mandated to continue developing.

But I disagree the continued development they've chose to pursue is based on following what their customers want - seriously, who wanted a 2.5m subsonic jet instead of a 2.5m Nerv or a 2.5m Rapier? Neither of us has a market survey, if such a thing was ever done. But we have the subforum. Planets were added years ago. People has been asking, and wondering, about stuff to do in them for years. At this point, they pretty much look like an afterthought. Gilly has a ridiculous time warp limit since it was introduced and no developer ever said "Oh, yes, that's an issue". Frankly, I wonder if there are developers who forgot what about Gilly. So go to the suggestion subforum, look for the more common requests and see when or if Squad even acknowledged them.

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this statement is just bugging the crap out of me, and if I get into trouble for what I'm going to say, then so be it.

First off, Squad does listen... trust me. I pm and bug the crap out of the moderators and/or DEV's all the time when they're on here. In fact @sal_vager must cringe when he sees I've sent him a pm with another question or problem... And they are amazing at listening and helping if and when the can.

And to say they don't listen because you can't get to another planet is ridiculous! Going interplanetary with a stock craft is SUPER easy!  And NO, I'm not using Engineer or Mechjeb or any of those mod tools. I prefer doing it the hard and fun way!!!

For example, all of these are stock, made by me, and can easily get to the other planets:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

If you can't build an interplanetary ship, then I suggest you watch some tutorials, improve your ship building skills, and not try to pin it on Squad!!!

I'm not talking about building ships. I'm talking about, for instance, sending a fleet to Dres without mods to fine tune the maneuver node, without mods or outside tools to find out when the transfer window is up and without mods to handle multiple simultaneous missions