Console Patches Update Discussion

[burnttoaster]

I bought this game a little while ago for the ps4, I would really enjoy it if the game would let me.  The constant freezing, crashing and corrupted save files I could deal with...If those were the only problems, but the entire control mechanism, just doesnt work.  Using the thumbsticks is so completely awkward.  PS4 has keyboard and mouse support, why doesnt kerbal space program for the PS4 have this?  How difficult could it be to let users have an adequate user interface? 

I have not played this game on the PC, but the method to attach parts seems broken.  Parts do not easily attach together, sometimes it takes great effort to get two pieces that intuitively should just snap right together to come even close to alignment.  i shouldnt have to sit there and rotate a part in every manner of orientation, flipping it at random, moving it back and forth for the program to decide seemingly arbitrarily that its reached proper alignment.

I almost considered buying the game for the PC, but I decided against it.  The lack of news about an update, The lack of communication with the people who bought the game for the consoles...Its not acceptable.

You need to talk to us.

[chimpbone]

41 minutes ago, RW1984 said:

https://m.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3slem9/concerns_about_ksps_console_portingflying_tiger/

FYI.  This guy saw it coming.  FTE have a horrible reputation. Proof that squad couldn't give a damn about the console versions.

Wow. I think I have seen that before, but it still sucks to read. He is right. KSP would be a difficult game to port successfully for a competent company, let alone Flying Tiger. I don't know what Squad saw in Flying Tiger's history or reputation that would make them think that they would do a good job with their game. I don't know what they thought they were getting away with actually. It is clear at this point that Squad was trying to maximize profits while putting the real costs onto their customers. For as much criticism as big AAA companies like EA get, at least they have the sense to fire a company like Flying Tiger, and at least they have better customer support.  

[chimpbone]

Well, it looks like they are submitting an xbox one patch for certification this week. Still working on the playstation patch though. I am interested to see what exactly they are patching besides the save corruption. 

[DD_bwest]

well there is some good news finally, i hope we get more on the ps4 version soon.

i hope the broken achievements didnt get forgotten, with everything else being much more of a priority.  lol

[Guest]

_{Space programs like to launch stuff early.}

[Majorjim!]

10 hours ago, RW1984 said:

https://m.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3slem9/concerns_about_ksps_console_portingflying_tiger/

FYI.  This guy saw it coming.  FTE have a horrible reputation. Proof that squad couldn't give a damn about the console versions.

A great many folks on this forum saw it coming too. They all knew using FT was a huge mistake. Oh the humanity.. RIP full price paying console players.

6 hours ago, DD_bwest said:

i hope we get more on the ps4 version soon.

lol.. folks where saying that A MONTH ago.

[Yakuzi]

10 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Last but not least, Nestor has some great news about the Xbox One patch! We now have the version that will enter certification this week. This version will fix the save issue Xbox One users have been reporting. We will keep you updated on the status of the certification. On the other hand we are still working on testing the PS4 patch and hopefully we’ll be able to give you an update soon.

Apparently the Xbox One patch should enter certification soon... No progress with the PS4 patch it seems. Also no news when/if 1.2 will be released on consoles.

I truly feel for the console players (not one myself), it is completely unacceptable for any company to keep their customers in the dark for so long with a broken product, without apology or compensation. Despite the knowledge of their defective product, @SQUAD shamelessly continues to advertise the PS4 and Xbox KSP versions on the front page of their website. It's quite appalling.

Please keep in mind though that KS^quadP, the KSP development team, is not the same as $QUAD, the marketing and advertisement company (check out their amazing website, under "Agencia"). You can read more on the company structure and the origin of KSP in an interview with Felipe Falange and SQUAD owners/directors Adrian Goya and Ezequiel Ayarza here.

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by Yakuzi

[RW1984]

While I'm happy that the XBOX is finally getting a patch soon as a ps4 user im bitterly disappointed. Another disappointment is the level of information we get. The section on the patch in the dev notes was merely an afterthought.  They said they'd fixed the corruption issue. What about the plethora of other bugs? And is there any attempt to improve optimisation? And do we get any future support as in update to version 1.2? @SQUAD please respond.

[Space Station 4 Crash]

On 2016-09-17 at 10:05 AM, danowat said:

I get that, but answer this.

Why were these bugs not found in testing?, were they and they just shipped it anyway?, or was the product just not tested?, there are UI issues that present themselves within a few hours of play, so it's not like it would have taken extensive testing.

Consoles now have the option of having games in early access, if FTE wanted some extended testing, and get some money, then they should have gone down that route, rather than just throwing this mess into the wild.

Hey man!

It seems like we are now on to a different point. I was just stating that they care. They need this to work and that this debacle is not a personal thing or hate against you.

PS4 doesn't have an early access program. It was announced and launched first on PS4. The problems the two consoles are having are not the same, they are both experiencing different issues. Both game crippling.

Hindsight sucks for SQUAD and FTE, looking now we can point and criticize. As you say, "Why were these bugs not found in testing?". You should voice your opinion and criticize, I think it improves quality assurance if the customer lets a company know that they need to take more care. But again the reality is it did get through, the "how" doesn't matter anymore, they didn't find the bugs and now we are over 2 months with no patch because they can't fix it promptly. They need this to work. As they said in a post, "we simply have to fix it, there is no other option". I'm now more interested in the "when".

.... And to directly answer your question, I have no idea why these bugs were not found?

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by Space Station 4 Crash
One more thing.

[HebaruSan]

Another PC user here to express sympathy with console players. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to lose saves and have that prospect looming over you at all times while running the game. Console players deserve a fully working product for their full price payment. As others have said, PC releases have also shipped with severe bugs, though not as severe as what apparently afflicts consoles at the moment, so we both know and don't quite know what it's like. But the core game is so unique and amazing when it does work that we're all in this weird love/hate relationship, wanting the game to get out of its own way so we can enjoy it properly. It's like if you could buy the Hope Diamond for $40, but it occasionally and unpredictably emits the worst odor you've ever smelled and paralyzes you so you can't run away.

As for how it got to this point, I speculate (based on no evidence, to be clear) that SQUAD simply trusted Flying Tiger too much. FT was hired to do a job, and SQUAD's technical staff was focused on features and fixes for the core game (which is sometimes treated as "the PC release" but in reality will eventually reach all platforms), so when it came down to it they probably erred on the side of taking FT's word for it that the port was working. No one wants to think that their business partner is deceptive or incompetent. I'm not saying SQUAD did no console QA the last time around, but there's always a balance between spending more time testing versus getting the product to market, and when those trade-offs come up, it's easy to shrug and say, "It probably works, it's mostly the same code as on PC." It may well be that their test plan did not include "play for two hours with at least one high part count craft and then save and load the game." Then they paid for that at release by finding themselves in the untenable situation of being responsible for a defective product with no simple fixes in sight. My guess is SQUAD will need to fire FTE and take ownership of the console ports in-house for this to get this resolved as it should be.

It does seem that as a team, SQUAD lack in their ability to recognize and cope with truly severe problems in general. Sometimes you have to raise a red flag and say, "This is simply too bad to be acceptable; we need to make a big announcement / we can't release it like this / we have to issue refunds / this shouldn't be on the store in this state / etc." That's one commonality I see between the 1.1 release and this console debacle. SQUAD seems to prefer the "keep quiet and muddle through somehow" approach.

To sum up, this is about how it breaks down in my book:

Problem	Responsible party
Technical errors in ports	FTE
Choice of company to handle ports	SQUAD
Failure to fully QA console ports before release	SQUAD
20+ failures to fix the problems after release	FTE
Failure to issue blanket refunds or otherwise do adequate customer relations	SQUAD
Ultimate responsibility	SQUAD

 

 

 

 

 

I would further note that none of SQUAD's identifiable faults can be laid at the feet of the actual development team, the ones writing the code from day to day, who seem to be pretty excellent at the moment based on the state of the 1.2 pre-release. So if they can somehow get the problems with the ports ironed out, we can hope that everyone will have the same really great release someday. But that's a big 'if'.

[DD_bwest]

7 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

A great many folks on this forum saw it coming too. They all knew using FT was a huge mistake. Oh the humanity.. RIP full price paying console players.

lol.. folks where saying that A MONTH ago.

lol i know.. but if the xbox version is going for cert, the ps4 cant be to far behind.. one would hope lol

they shoulda waited and ported 1.2 lol  much more stable

[RW1984]

Just now, DD_bwest said:

lol i know.. but if the xbox version is going for cert, the ps4 cant be to far behind.. one would hope lol

they shoulda waited and ported 1.2 lol  much more stable

From the small amount of info that they've given their customers whom theyve ripped off the ps4 is giving them much more problems

[DD_bwest]

1 minute ago, RW1984 said:

From the small amount of info that they've given their customers whom theyve ripped off the ps4 is giving them much more problems

yes, but also if the xbox patch is "done" and sent off for cert,  everyone who was working on it can switch to the ps4 build.  the best we can do is hope

and they better fix that dam trophy ... lol

[chimpbone]

4 hours ago, RW1984 said:

While I'm happy that the XBOX is finally getting a patch soon as a ps4 user im bitterly disappointed. Another disappointment is the level of information we get. The section on the patch in the dev notes was merely an afterthought.  They said they'd fixed the corruption issue. What about the plethora of other bugs? And is there any attempt to improve optimisation? And do we get any future support as in update to version 1.2? @SQUAD please respond.

I am guessing that they only fixed the save corruption issue. Pretty lame, but at this point, expected. I think I am kind of over this game at this point. I am very unimpressed and underwhelmed. Too little too late. I can see that there is potential in the game, but I am not willing to go through the pains of an early access game when I paid full price. 1.2 is probably going to come out on console sometime next year. I seriously loathe this game. I wish Squad would have just given me my money back. 

Edited September 21, 2016 by chimpbone

[RW1984]

2 minutes ago, chimpbone said:

I am guessing that they only fixed the save corruption issue. Pretty lame, but at this point, expected. I think I am kind of over this game at this point. I am very unimpressed and underwhelmed. I can see that there is potential in the game, but I am not willing to go through the pains of an early access game when I paid full price. 1.2 is probably going to come out on console sometime next year. I seriously loathe this game. I wish Squad would have just given me my money back. 

Agreed, I haven't played in ages because what's the point. I've asked in this thread and in this week's dev note thread for more info and an apology, the only response from squad was a snide remark about how even pacman wasn't bug free. This from a company who should be asking our forgiveness for this disaster. I'm shocked at their indifference and arrogance towards the console community

[Majorjim!]

16 hours ago, DD_bwest said:

lol i know.. but if the xbox version is going for cert, the ps4 cant be to far behind.. one would hope lol

they shoulda waited and ported 1.2 lol  much more stable

Agreed. Making folks pay full price for a totally broken version and then having them wait two months to play the game they payed for is unacceptable. 

Edited September 22, 2016 by Majorjim!

[chimpbone]

29 minutes ago, RW1984 said:

Agreed, I haven't played in ages because what's the point. I've asked in this thread and in this week's dev note thread for more info and an apology, the only response from squad was a snide remark about how even pacman wasn't bug free. This from a company who should be asking our forgiveness for this disaster. I'm shocked at their indifference and arrogance towards the console community

Just read that pacman nonsense in the dev notes thread. That sucks man. They are the ones who said that they weren't going to release it until it was "perfect." Now they are saying that a perfect game is impossible. What a mess. Also, I don't think they are even sorry, so why would they apologize? Apologizing would be admitting that they did something wrong, and they aren't going to do that. They are just going to point the finger at FT, and tell us to be patient and wait. If anything, they are going to blame us for buying the game. 

 

[Guest]

I bet they fix it by dropping the max part count to 100...   They are hiring staff to work on the PC build with their console profits.  As a Sony gamer I am now fully mortified.  Does anyone know how to delete KSP forum profile?

[AndyChilly]

17 hours ago, DOCTOR DEMENTAL said:

I bet they fix it by dropping the max part count to 100...   

Ugh, I really, really, REALLY hope you are wrong about that. I have been patient and I haven't ripped into them too much because well, excrements happens and we all move on with or lives in the end. but if they have "fixed" the problem but just dropping the max part count and essentially creating a KSP Jr game. I will move on and forget about this game. the thing that has made me patient is that I figured I would eventually be able to make the big stuff and for now just play with the small stuff.

[Homedawgian]

35 minutes ago, AndyChilly said:

Ugh, I really, really, REALLY hope you are wrong about that. I have been patient and I haven't ripped into them too much because well, excrements happens and we all move on with or lives in the end. but if they have "fixed" the problem but just dropping the max part count and essentially creating a KSP Jr game. I will move on and forget about this game. the thing that has made me patient is that I figured I would eventually be able to make the big stuff and for now just play with the small stuff.

Yeah that would suck but, I'd say there's little to no chance that that would happen. Plus, that wouldn't fix anything, it would just delay the save files from crashing by 66%.

[Invaderdave]

On 8/8/2016 at 3:20 PM, Saidg23 said:

Just back your save up into the cloud or a USB stick. There isn't much you can do about it others than backing up your save every so often. It's what I've been doing and only lost my save once because I accidentally overrode the backup with the corrupted data.

I have had very limited success with this method. I have an instance of my game saved in the cloud and on USB. (The USB save is a later version of the cloud version) The USB save file, without fail, gives the corruption error message at the load screen and I can play for hours sometimes with the cloud save, but the first time I try to back up the file (which require that you close the game, copy, and then restart) it corrupts.

It just feels like way too much time to have to spend saving my awesomely powerful yet elegant rocket designs from consistent, imminent doom. It's too heart-breaking! I love this game but honestly, attempting to work around this bug is making me hate it. So before that happens I'm just going to have to put it down until the update. 

[Invaderdave]

On 8/13/2016 at 6:36 PM, GriffKiller said:

With the control thang i wasnt talking about you just some of the people on the forum my b i should have made that clear. Im just happy to have ksb weather it's a little broken or not.

And as long as the save file problem is whats stoping you you can still play you just can't leave any trace of our progress(ship wise) witch does really suck

A game that you can play but can't save and have to start over from the very beginning 100% of the time is not a full-priced game, it's a demo. 

[Guest]

@Invaderdave yes indeed.  If that demo ever currupts your game data it's a beta demo.

[TheMightyDerp]

I emailed the devs about at least letting the console owners know the status of these updates. That was about 2 weeks ago and they haven't even bothered. It doesn't seem like this game is getting fixed anytime soon.

[Deadmanrunning]

One of the Dev notes this week said xbone patch is going to get certified... sure hope the Quality is Assured on that patch.