The Day-Of-The-Announcement Discussion Thread

[Benjamin Kerman]

Too late. It came out at 1 pm pacific time.

[hikoriyami]

26 minutes ago, Benjamin Kerman said:

Too late. It came out at 1 pm pacific time.

Off topic: dug into my bookshelf for a semaphore alphabet. I expected secret code, was dissapoint.

On topic: as a mod maker I can say localisation is a huge thing that we should be excited for, and the competition makes me want to film a  Kerbal Chronicles entry in English e Español mis amigas. 

Edited March 3, 2017 by hikoriyami

[Superfluous J]

I just woke from a fever dream where the super secret new thing that all we know about is that modders can hook into it is actually localization and we've all been No Man's Skying it by inferring what was never actually implied.

Then when fully awake I thought "You know what? That actually sounds like a really likely thing."

[lodger]

Too bad, no cupholder ...

[Wjolcz]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I just woke from a fever dream where the super secret new thing that all we know about is that modders can hook into it is actually localization and we've all been No Man's Skying it by inferring what was never actually implied.

Then when fully awake I thought "You know what? That actually sounds like a really likely thing."

It's true that people expect too much. However, I think both sides (the community and SQUAD) aren't without a blame. SQUAD goes all "secret feature" mode and then the community goes all "IT'S THE NEW PLANET GUYS BECAUSE IT'S SECREEEEEEEEEET".

They should consider starting development of a new game if they want the hype back.

[Kobymaru]

5 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I just woke from a fever dream where the super secret new thing that all we know about is that modders can hook into it is actually localization and we've all been No Man's Skying it by inferring what was never actually implied.

Right, but such announcements by SQUAD in the past years usually had something substantial in them. Remember Atmosphere Overhaul? Remember Resources? Remember Asteroid Day? Remember the parts they did with NASA? Those were all a whole lot bigger than this, and they still didn't need an announcement-announcement.

So while it's true that we've been No Man's Skying it a bit, SQUAD has clearly also been Sean Murray'ing it.

Is this the new SQUAD that we should get used to now? Teasing without any substance, being super vague about features, and simply promising things that aren't there?

 

[Raptor9]

12 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Squad: "We're localizing KSP."
Community: "OK."
Squad: "We're localizing KSP."
Community: "Yes, you said that."
Squad: "We're localizing KSP."
Community: "We heard you the first time."
Squad: "We're localizing KSP."
Community: "OKAY! OKAY! We get it! You're localizing KSP!"
Squad: "WE'VE GOT A REALLY HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT! IT'S REALLY BIG! DON'T MISS IT!"
Community: "Wait? What? What is it? What are you doing! What's the big news!? Tell us! Tell us!"
Squad: "We're localizing KSP."
Community: "GAAAHHH!!!"

That made me laugh pretty good.

I usually side with Squad with news like this when the community turns sour on them.  In the past year or so, a lot of relatively vicious and dissatisfied posts followed Squad "KSP Weekly" posts.  I still think a lot of it was people just never being happy with what was reported about current development because we all have quite grand "wishes" for what we want out of KSP.  Unfortunately, some people tended to vent their disappointments by trashing Squad's decisions and/or progress.

However, having said that, this particular series of events in my opinion was an exception to what has normally occurred in the past.  I've been playing KSP since early alpha stages in late 2011, so I've seen how the usual development-release-development-release cycle has been handled in the Daily Kerbal section over the past several years.  Historically, whenever Squad has used a "super-secret project" announcement, it was something that they hadn't mentioned at all, and was genuinely a total surprise to the fan base.  Squad has teased us with images/clues before leading up to a big feature release, but those were hardly treated as something from Area 51.

The best evidence of how misleading this all was is the past several KSP Weeklys spent entire paragraphs detailing the development work of the localisation, but at the end had a blurb about their "big secret thing" they've been working on.  In my mind, that alludes to two distinct and separate things.  I'm not trying to make light of how much work went into the localisation; I'm no programmer so I wouldn't know.  I even commented on a past KSP Weekly how I thought KSP being available in more languages would further grow the community and interest in space/aeronautics (I still believe that).  I'm merely saying the Public Relations side of it all was fairly misleading.

So to summarize, while I have always given Squad the benefit of the doubt, and have always occupied the "Squad doesn't owe us anything" camp, they did sort of shoot themselves in the foot with how this was handled.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Kobymaru said:

Remember Atmosphere Overhaul? Remember Resources? Remember Asteroid Day? Remember the parts they did with NASA?

Remember destructible buildings? Remember rocket exhaust dust plumes? Remember the rocket parts overhaul? Remember plushies?

Squad has done a lot of good, don't get me wrong, but their ratio of promotion to content has been spotty at best.

[evileye.x]

16 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

A NEW CONTEST! Send in a picture of how you participate in SQUAD's viral marketing as a mindless KSP-vehicle. The user with the most Facebook-Shares of KSP-related content, the user with the most KSP-Stickers on their car and the first who legally changes their name to Jebediah "Moarcashforsquad" Kerman get a picture of a 3D print of a paper cutout of the old Mk-2 capsule sent to their E-Mail address.

Laughed so hard... Because it's actually true...

 

[John FX]

14 hours ago, stibbons said:

Shorter KSP forums:

SQUAD: "We're localising KSP"
Forums: "OK"
SQUAD: "We're localising KSP"
Forums: "OK"
SQUAD: "We're localising KSP"
Forums: "OK"
SQUAD: "We have an announcement!"
Forums: "OK"
SQUAD: "We're releasing our localisation pack!"
Forums : "WHAT?!"

Or more accurately

Shorter KSP forums:

SQUAD: "We're localising KSP and we have a super secret thing we will announce later"
Forums: "OK, maybe tone down the super secret thing, they are usually a disappointment"
SQUAD: "We're localising KSP and we have a super secret thing we will announce later"
Forums: "OK, maybe tone down the super secret thing, they are usually a disappointment"
SQUAD: "We're localising KSP"
Forums: "OK, glad you dropped hyping the super secret thing, they are usually a disappointment"
SQUAD: "We have an announcement!"
Forums: "OK"
SQUAD: "We're releasing our localisation pack and we have a competition!"
Forums : "Meh, expected as much"

[tater]

I had to hunt the thread down (and now they've trained me to not look at the dev updates like I always used to).

 

So the big, secret announcement was really what was always in the open and never secret? Really? Who comes up with this? 

[Frybert]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

So the big, secret announcement was really what was always in the open and never secret? Really? Who comes up with this? 

 

I have read exactly no where that this announcement was their 'secret' thing. In fact what I read was:

 

1.) They announced the date the next release would enter it's pre-release. (which is pretty big news)

 

2.)That there is still more stuff to come in the future.

 

You can make whatever assumptions you like, but that is what I read. 

 

 

 

 

[tater]

Fair enough. I only know what I see people saying. The weekly updates have been so meh, I stopped reading them, frankly. I went back and looked at the last one, and it says that localization is coming along, then a few paragraphs later it says big announcement coming. That implicitly disconnects the two items to me, even if it explicitly does no such thing. Clearly my own biases are showing, I see "localization" and skim it as it's uninteresting to me. It's like saying the fonts are changing.

 

Maybe I'll go back to reading the updates when they contain new game/technical content (I'm not downplaying localization, clearly that can impact many people, but I put that in a different category from new game capabilities, worlds, parts, etc.).

Edited March 3, 2017 by tater

[Benjamin Kerman]

25 minutes ago, Frybert said:

They announced the date the next release would enter it's pre-release. (which is pretty big news)

I think what everyone else, including me, see the next "1.2.x". Localization is great, as I said before, but I don't believe they are going to release 1.3 just for that. 

Everyone just assumed that this announcement was announcing their secret thing, and that's why there's this drama. 

SQUAD should do a better job at deciding what to hype, and what to say "Oh, there's a prerelease for localization out, and we have a contest! 

I think that that approach would be received a lot better by the community.

[Jarin]

14 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Back off of the tempers, please, people. 

 

I'm not mad, I'm just very disappointed. /dadvoice

[Sirad]

On 2.3.2017 at 4:51 PM, Sirad said:

- plushies
 

 

at least i was right.

[whitejj01]

do you guys think we can still expect a KSP Weekly tonight?

[Sirad]

2 hours ago, whitejj01 said:

do you guys think we can still expect a KSP Weekly tonight?

 

QA of Localization is going well and soon we have a very important announcement.

 

right ?

[Wjolcz]

9 hours ago, Sirad said:

 

QA of Localization is going well and soon we have a very important announcement.

 

right ?

And I thought I was the bitter one.

[TheEpicSquared]

17 hours ago, Sirad said:

 

QA of Localization is going well and soon we have a very important announcement.

 

right ?

Pretty much, just substitute the "super-secret part" with "console stuff".