KSP expansion packs confirmed

[ErgionThorn]

i wish they would fix aerodynamics first, its still not working...

[Freshmeat]

I think it very much depend on how things are done.

My basis for comparison are Killing Floor and World of Tanks, two games that i spend quite a number of hours with.

Killing Floor was a coop shooter with a very rich modding community. Like KSP, some mods where essential to gameplay, and several maps where found on almost every server, but everyone who had the game could play for free. However, Tripwire would sell additional player models and weapons for a small price, like €4. Just a step above microtransaction, and I bought every single of them to support the game. Additional avatars would be available if you had other Tripwire games, but again this was solely bragging rights. The weapons was DLC in the sense that only DLC owners could buy the weapons from the ingame "store", but if you picked up a weapon you could use it, and buy additional ammunition for it. Further, the balance was very good. You would not necessarily choose a DLC weapon to win, but because they looked better.

World of Tanks should need less introduction, as the game is infamous for its pay-to-win model. Most of the best tanks where only available for additional money, in the price range of €10-50. More importantly, HEAT shells where ridiculously expensive in ingame currency, making it an option for the best players and those who paid. And once you started facing heavy armor, it made a world of difference. A medium tank shooting HEAT would be able to kill a heavy using AP, whereas AP was not guarantied to penetrate a medium over distance. I never bought anything out of general principle, and eventually stopped playing World of Tanks.

What to take from this: Publishers get further with carrots than sticks, especially with a large modding community. I would pay a small amount for a silly addition, but be rather miffed if I had to pay a lot for something directly related to my gameplay. Thus I think that engines and capsules would be a bad choice for DLC, while parts with aesthetic function would be a good target. If the price was right, I would pay for additional planets, but I would be angry about having to pay for life support.

[Sharpy]

38 minutes ago, Gaarst said:

Some time ago, Steam and Bethesda partnered and tried to make people pay for mods for Skyrim on the Workshop; let's just say people were not really happy about this.

 

For PC, IIRC?

Or was that 'mods for consoles' getting nixed?

As for cross-platform compatibility, AFAIK that's abstracted away by the game engine to a large degree. Mods are pretty cross-compatible between Linux and Windows, aren't they?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Well, the way I think about it is this: what type of content can be offered as an expansion? Answer: something that can't be offered by mods.

Unless mods go payware, then SQUAD can't really compete. From a business perspective, they can't justify the investment in creating something that will be competing with one (or more!) mods that do it for free. And you can bet your a... erm, hat, the moment SQUAD comes up with something, somebody else will create a mod that does the same.

KSP in a sense is "too modable for its own good" (not really, but you get what I mean).

In other games I've seen where mods were a thing, expansions were either a) HUGE or b) added something to parts of the game that were locked to modding.

... and I don't see how SQUAD could do (a) and KSP is too open to do (b), so... expansions will have to be done on the cheap to account for low sales, which limits its quality/content, which in turn gives mods the upper hand...

Who knows really.

[Tau137]

Get the main game fixed first, PLEASE, then we can talk about DLC.

[Hannu2]

I would like to have better planets. Better and more interesting terrains (3D surfaces with caves and fine details) with physical interactions (flowing fluids, temperature effects, corrosion, toxicity, surface properties etc.). There should also be reasons to explore planets. Randoms spots from different biomes should give just maybe 1/4 of science. Rest would be scattered on procedurally generated spots on celestial bodies (based on a seed number which could be changed between saves to give new spots). Something would be able to see from orbit with suitable detectors and something would require unmanned landers, rovers or planes and something would need kerbals to be revealed. Some would be on the caves or bottom of the lakes or seas. It would be the content which is impossible to mod into the game. It would be expensive to develop it and I think that I could pay couple of tens of euros from it.

But I would not buy any graphical enhancements, parts without new physical functions, new planets which are similar colored almost physicsless balls than current ones (in stock and mods), etc. stuff for which there are plenty of high quality mods. I am also not interested in multiplayer KSP.

[64Bit]

İf SQUAD needs cash they should

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First you BUY The game

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Play in Single Player Mode

Free

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Play in Multi Player Mode

Monthly Payment

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Anybody plays WoW ?

 

[HafCoJoe]

On 10/4/2016 at 3:05 PM, regex said:

vOv

I get updates and expansion packs for free, so no worries here.

>.> You get everything for free?

[regex]

47 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

>.> You get everything for free?

I bought the game before April 2013 (I think that was the cutoff date) which entitles me to all updates and DLCs for free, per Squad. If that's not true then they have reneged on that promise, but they haven't put out any DLCs yet so I can't say for certain.

[HafCoJoe]

52 minutes ago, regex said:

I bought the game before April 2013 (I think that was the cutoff date) which entitles me to all updates and DLCs for free, per Squad. If that's not true then they have reneged on that promise, but they haven't put out any DLCs yet so I can't say for certain.

Alas, I bought at 2013-07-31  I'll have to see if the same applies for me then hm

[regex]

Just now, Avera9eJoe said:

Alas, I bought at 2013-07-31  I'll have to see if the same applies for me then hm

Yeah, I could be wrong about the date, that was a long time ago and it's not exactly publicly displayed knowledge at this point.

[JohnF]

I will get the DLC for free but I'd relish the chance to give Squad a bit more cash to continue to fund development. I paid $18 bucks (not on sale) for a game I have played for thousands of hours. I've bought the PS4 version for $40, even though it's comparably unplayable, just as way to pay Squad a more reasonable amount of money for this game. I am of course a little sad about the recent brain-drain, but I'll still throw money at Squad any chance I get. More KSP please.