Do we really need game modes?

[Green Baron]

15 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

We've got sandbox, science, and career, but also (soon) toggleable antenna restrictions, adjustable heat severity, etc. Instead of having those options split between types of choices, why not just have one game mode with each of those things as player choices? Gather science on/off, pay for parts on/off, tech unlock parts on/off, heat high/medium/low, and so on. Just spitballing. 

I find this a good idea. I played career and plan to do so when 1.2 is out and stable. Career gives a little "play reward". In the past, when career was completed, i did a few interplanetary missions and then i waited for the next release. Sandbox to me is for testing only.

I find that role-play-element "levels" is pretty useless except for wheel repair and KAS. It can be deleted or moved to the astronaut faciltiy as tranining programs ...

Or does anybody's playstyle rely on the levels ?

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by Green Baron

[John FX]

15 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

We've got sandbox, science, and career, but also (soon) toggleable antenna restrictions, adjustable heat severity, etc. Instead of having those options split between types of choices, why not just have one game mode with each of those things as player choices? Gather science on/off, pay for parts on/off, tech unlock parts on/off, heat high/medium/low, and so on. Just spitballing. 

I fully agree, all difficulty options should be on a toggle in the advanced options for a career or sandbox game.

I mean even a sandbox game is just a career game with no science and no funds so I guess there should just be `start game` and a bunch of options, some of which allow the current game modes.

If the game modes can be changed during a game without starting a new one that might be cool too.

[Kerbart]

I think that for starting players (the ones that effectively bankroll any development in the KSP software) there should be a choice between career and sandbox.

then inside sandbox, "easy sandbox" or anything that says "pick this if you are new to the game" and "custom sandbox" where you can pick your poison (science tree, contracts, etc)

[Wjolcz]

I very much agree. I'd love to create my own game mode with science points toggled off and progress in the career that way.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Veeltch

[Wjolcz]

13 hours ago, nightingale said:

There's not that much left that directly relies on game modes:

• Strategies - get broken if you remove funds or science
• Contracts - get broken if you remove funds or science
• Funds - get broken if you remove contracts (strategies and milestones don't give enough on their own)

So really the only viable combination that isn't available would be "career without Strategies", but it's pretty easy to ignore the Admin Building if that isn't your thing.

Of course, other combinations could be made viable (science with contracts is probably the one I've heard requested before), but any of those would require a non-trivial development effort.

You're probably sick of all of my career suggestions, but I was thinking about it and if career ever gets an overhaul it could work like this:

Contracts - Strategies dependent. Strategies become filters (just like in the Strategia mod of yours). If strategies are toggled off the contracts simply keep being random, much like it is now. The current strategies are pretty useless anyway (maybe introduce a currency exchange widget, just so people can play the way it works now).

Funds/Science/Reputation - Make them toggable

Tech tree - Let the player pick what kind of currency (rep/sci/funds) he/she wants to unlock it with.

Science experiments - Again, let the player pick what kind of reward he/she wants for performing them.

Is there any case this wouldn't work in?

[TheSaint]

I think this is a great idea. Therefore, Squad will ignore it.

[worir4]

Yes i agree.

I have always wanted a mode with just funds but also experiments that work.

[FullMetalMachinist]

I honestly don't see the point in changing/adding the modes or difficulty options. Every mode or combination of options that has been suggested is already possible.

Want sandbox + contracts? Start a career game and cheat in a huge supply of whichever resource(s) you don't want to worry about. 

The only thing that I'd like to see is a customizable "mode" where you set all the difficulty options how you want, and can save & export that so that every time you start a new game you don't have to go through and set every option (which is becoming more than a few)  how you want it. 

[TheSaint]

6 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

I honestly don't see the point in changing/adding the modes or difficulty options. Every mode or combination of options that has been suggested is already possible.

Want sandbox + contracts? Start a career game and cheat in a huge supply of whichever resource(s) you don't want to worry about. 

The only thing that I'd like to see is a customizable "mode" where you set all the difficulty options how you want, and can save & export that so that every time you start a new game you don't have to go through and set every option (which is becoming more than a few)  how you want it. 

Well, that's exactly it. Instead of having to jump through a bunch of hoops every time, you would just have a dialog with a bunch of check boxes and sliders that pops up when you start a new game, "Select the options for your new game". You get it all in one place, up front, instead of having to hunt them all down.

I suppose you could even just have the existing game modes and add another mode, "Advanced" or "Custom" that lets you pick and choose everything that you want or don't want.

[FullMetalMachinist]

5 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Well, that's exactly it. Instead of having to jump through a bunch of hoops every time, you would just have a dialog with a bunch of check boxes and sliders that pops up when you start a new game, "Select the options for your new game". You get it all in one place, up front, instead of having to hunt them all down.

I don't have a problem with that necessarily, I just don't see a huge need for it. And as was already mentioned, it's a non-trivial amount of work to do it. 

6 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

I suppose you could even just have the existing game modes and add another mode, "Advanced" or "Custom" that lets you pick and choose everything that you want or don't want.

This I would love. I would just want that "custom" mode to be persistent, so that you didn't have to re-elect all your options again every time you start a new game. 

[Mikki]

The meaning of playing a "career" in a game is the challenge itself, like in RL, some people like the tension of managing a system and some don`t.
Simple question, would it be fair to add a special feature to the game only available in "career" to make it somehow worth the ...grind?
Something like a additonal... [REDACTED]?

Or is the "career" mode feature enough as it is?
I like the grind, it gives most fun.

[Slam_Jones]

Excellent idea.  This will allow people to play exactly how they like.

Like the original Career?  Enable all of the options.  Like Sandbox?  Disable Funds, Science, Rep, and set all building to Full Tier.

Or any combination of the above.  As weird as it sounds, it would still be interesting to do a Rep-only career, where you have unlimited science and funds, but if your rep falls too far from failed missions, you lose.

Or a simple, long grindfest (if you like that sort of thing) for Science, without the hassle of Rep or Funds.

Or whatever interesting combination one can come up with.  KSP is very open-ended anyway, and this would only help it moreso in that regard.  Players can still put restrictions in place, but they will get to pick and choose to tailor it to exactly how they want to play.

As long as it is within the options (or even Pre-Sets one can choose) to use the "old" game modes, I don't see how it could be a bad idea.

+1

Edited September 21, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[Dire_Squid]

Frankly, I enjoy Career Mode since, unlike Sandbox Mode, it taught me "how to make the most efficient rocket", rather than "how to make the biggest/fastest rocket" Sandbox Mode pretty much endorses.

 

Also, before an accidental reload to a previous save, I had a pretty tricky Tourism Contract where I had Six Kerbals wanting different things (One wanting a Mun Orbit, two wanting a Minmus Orbit, and three wanting a Minmus Landing)... I started writing down, in tally/name abbreviation style, which Kerbal wanted what, since the contract isn't as cut-and-dry as I just explained it (Itineraries are sometimes out of order), allowing me to figure out three different trips which would, effectively, minimize the amount of Kerbal seating and allow for a more stable take-off and angling to create an orbit.

 

I guess I'm a glutton for cunning and resourcefulness.

Edited September 22, 2016 by Dire_Squid

[Wjolcz]

4 minutes ago, Dire_Squid said:

Also, before an accidental reload to a previous save, I had a pretty tricky Tourism Contract where I had Six Kerbals wanting different things (One wanting a Mun Orbit, two wanting a Minmus Orbit, and three wanting a Minmus Landing)... I started writing down, in tally/name abbreviation style, which Kerbal wanted what, since the contract isn't as cut-and-dry as I just explained it (Itineraries are sometimes out of order), allowing me to figure out three different trips which would, effectively, minimize the amount of Kerbal seating and allow for a more stable take-off and angling to create an orbit.

That's the exact same reason why I never accept these contracts. The objectives of a single contract are all over the place and it's impossible to know who wants what unless it's written down.

[Dire_Squid]

3 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

That's the exact same reason why I never accept these contracts. The objectives of a single contract are all over the place and it's impossible to know who wants what unless it's written down.

Welcome to real life.

[Wjolcz]

9 hours ago, Dire_Squid said:

Welcome to real life.

Huh?

[Ehco Corrallo]

You can do this in the current game, and although it's not binary (I agree that on/off options would be nice, if game-breaking), where gameplay is concerned, it's the same result: 

If you tweak with the career difficulty settings enough, you can make it so that reputation or money or science won't be an issue by raising the starting amount and increasing the multiplier. Crude yes, but effective. For the sake of balancing, you could make the remaining resources scant to start with, and cut the multiplier. Or not, for imbalance's sake. 

Maxing out starting funds, science, and rep, and cranking the multipliers for the aforementioned is a pretty easy -- if technically workaround-y -- way of implementing the fabled 'Sandbox with contracts'. 

But don't take my word for it, because I've never tried it. Just a thought. 

[swjr-swis]

The way I see it, science/sandbox modes just wholesale disable entire features that I know at one point or another I may suddenly feel like including in an ongoing game, and then a game started in a non-career mode wouldn't let me. So I only ever start career games anymore.

But I don't remember the last time I used one of the preset choices as is without customizing a good number of options, and then some of my new 'careers' end up being sandbox games anyway - but with contracts and tech tree and building leveling available when I feel like it.

 

On 9/21/2016 at 7:53 PM, FullMetalMachinist said:

The only thing that I'd like to see is a customizable "mode" where you set all the difficulty options how you want, and can save & export that so that every time you start a new game you don't have to go through and set every option (which is becoming more than a few)  how you want it.

Technically we already have this too, hidden in plain sight as a 'savefile'. Start a new game, go through all the trouble of customizing the start settings, once loaded to KSC do any futher customizing with the difficulty options screen or cheat whatever stuff you want to make irrelevant for that game, then hit Esc and save to a named file. Next time you want to start an identical game, just grab the savefile you set aside, and skip the entire 'get my game set up as I want it' routine.

This can be extended to entirely skipping initial parts of a career. Say if one wants to play with a comms network and relevant constraints but setting up the initial comms network has become a tedium (something people are already preemptively complaining about in the prerelease forum): dedicate a new game to just setting up the initial comms network to the level one wishes to start out with in upcoming new games, then save it and use that savefile when needed.

 

On 9/21/2016 at 8:12 PM, FullMetalMachinist said:

I would just want that "custom" mode to be persistent, so that you didn't have to re-elect all your options again every time you start a new game.

Regardless what I said above, I would still welcome the game remembering my last selected options, as mentioned here. I guess I've come to expect computers/software to remember my preferences.

[katateochi]

I like this idea.  I'm primarily a sandbox player, but I do like some aspects of career so it would be nice to have basically a sandbox setup but maybe with contracts and funds, or basically a career setup but without part progression.  
If everything was an option then the "modes" just become option presets. I think having those presets is still important, as others have said to guide new players into a "best experience" setup without them having to deal with a bunch of options that they don't understand. 
Of Course it's all very well for us to say "just have them as options", but how hard that is to implement depends on how isolated the different career aspects are and whether one can simply just be disabled without causing complications.  It could result in a minefield of edge case situations!

[Dire_Squid]

16 hours ago, Veeltch said:

Huh?

Bluntly: Real life is not cut and dry. Real life is not simple. Real Life is not 100% dependable. Real life is messy, chaotic, FULL of variables!

Sometimes, making a game plan is the best way to figure out how to get "the most bang for your buck". Plus, as a medical professional, it's my job to jot down notes, especially if I can't remember some things whlie I'm barraged left and right with patients.

It's (Career Mode) clearly not your thing, Veeltch, and I won't slight you for it... but understand that it IS my thing.  

[Vanamonde]

Perhaps I should rephrase my idea. I'm not suggesting fewer choices, and I'm not suggesting many new ones. What I am saying is that currently gameplay settings are split between game mode, difficulty settings, pre-game options, etc. What I'm suggesting is taking that scattered system with the modes representing blocks of some of the choices linked as a batch, and replacing it with a single options screen which includes those choices and all the others that already exist, all in one place. 

[passinglurker]

3 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Perhaps I should rephrase my idea. I'm not suggesting fewer choices, and I'm not suggesting many new ones. What I am saying is that currently gameplay settings are split between game mode, difficulty settings, pre-game options, etc. What I'm suggesting is taking that scattered system with the modes representing blocks of some of the choices linked as a batch, and replacing it with a single options screen which includes those choices and all the others that already exist, all in one place. 

I'd still think for the sake of convenience and friendliness to newbs and reviewers that any all in one setting screen would still likely be hidden behind a convenient recommended preset selection screen.

[Wjolcz]

10 hours ago, Dire_Squid said:

It's (Career Mode) clearly not your thing, Veeltch, and I won't slight you for it... but understand that it IS my thing.  

I'd love it to be my thing, but I simply can't enjoy it with the state it is in.

6 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Perhaps I should rephrase my idea. I'm not suggesting fewer choices, and I'm not suggesting many new ones. What I am saying is that currently gameplay settings are split between game mode, difficulty settings, pre-game options, etc. What I'm suggesting is taking that scattered system with the modes representing blocks of some of the choices linked as a batch, and replacing it with a single options screen which includes those choices and all the others that already exist, all in one place. 

I agree, but the problem is some of these "blocks" are so geared together they can't be separated (what @nightingale said about the elements of career), because of their dependencies. In order to have toggle on/toggle off options most of these systems in KSP would have to change.

Edited September 24, 2016 by Veeltch

[pandaman]

Some options, such as Kerbal experience, it is nice to be able to include in sandbox should I wish.  Also contracts could also add to sandbox from a 'hmm,  not sure what to do, let's see if an interesting looking contract takes my fancy' angle, even though the rewards would be meaningless from anything other than an interest point if view.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

The latest 1.2 release, between the settings and cheat menu, now offers a pretty incredible amount of options to play how you want to play. It's not exactly what the OP is stating, but gosh darn if it isn't what people have been asking for since at least as long as I've been playing.