KSP Making History

[Alpha_Mike_741]

If there was a dislike button , I would use it

Spoiler

Now , and for making history . 

I mean , this is not the kind of expansion i would buy for supporting ksp . rather this is paying for the content that was left out in stock game and now we have to pay for it

ksp is out of beta but is not a finished game

Spoiler

Old devnotes didn't have to bold what they did. Since it was .

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by Alpha_Mike_741

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

This sounds great! KSP has already repaid the US$ 27 that I paid for it many, many times over. I look forward to new parts too.

[TheSaint]

I think paid DLC is great: Any way that Squad can make more money is a good thing because I want them to stay afloat and keep making more content for KSP. Because at the rate they're going, it seems like they're going to have to produce at least ten more major updates and three or four more paid DLCs before we see anything simple that we've been clamoring for for years, like an art pass for the parts, or clouds.

[Snark]

4 minutes ago, Alpha_Mike_741 said:

ksp is out of beta but is not a finished game

Really?

Many thousands of enthusiastic fans, plenty of content to keep a typical user engrossed for many, many hours.  And from this announcement, it sounds like they're moving on to paid expansion packs now.

So, that sounds pretty darn finished to me.

I suppose one definition of "unfinished" might be "doesn't have every single feature that I, personally, want it to have," which would be true for lots of folks, including me.  But that's clearly a ridiculous definition, since it's physically and economically impossible for any company to provide every feature that every user anywhere might want (including the mutually contradictory ones), forever, for free.  So I'll assume you don't mean that.

Unless you're using the term "finished" in some way I'm unfamiliar with?

[MaxZhao]

Just wanted to say that I'm very thankful that Squad will continue the development of KSP (which requires the money they earn through Expansion packs) 

[HebaruSan]

Hmm, I'm starting to get the feeling, and pardon me for jumping to conclusions, that Snark just might be a professional software engineer. Not sure how I got that idea though.

[Kerbart]

One can only hope that Squad doesn't get encouraged by the entitled bunch that is outraged over the fact that Squad programmers have the audacity to want a roof over their head and some food everyday.

Sure, eons ago Squad promised to never charge for DLC. That was stupid and shortsighted; I've felt that way about it since the second they made the announcement. Unless you sell the game as a subscription but I doubt anyone would like to pay, say, “only $5/mo” or maybe even “just $.10 for every hour played” because we all know how good the game is. That would simply cost a lot more.

But haven't we all made mistakes and backtracked from ill-advised promises made in the past? Software development is expensive. It needs to be paid somehow and even if current sales still support ongoing development, that is going to stop somewhere in the future. I got tremendous value from Squad by buying KSP many, many years ago, and I'll happily pay for DLC to see continued development.

[tater]

@Snark I think most of my posts effectively agree with you, the bit you quoted by me above pretty much exclusively relates to the extant, ugly rocket parts. When new aircraft parts have been released, we've been consistently told that the tanks, engines, etc would get a rework or retexture to bring them up to consistency with the plane parts. If that work is already being done as part of the DLC, it seems not unreasonable that it get done to the base game. Ie: if you made 2 identical rockets, one with the stock game that is up to date with the DLC (whatever version number the DLC updates), and one with the DLC installed, those 2 rockets should look identical. 

Past that, I'm happy to give Squad more money.

Edited March 17, 2017 by tater

[Mikki]

I love you SQUAD... (runs away very fast...)

[Alpha_Mike_741]

15 minutes ago, Snark said:

Really?

Many thousands of enthusiastic fans, plenty of content to keep a typical user engrossed for many, many hours.  And from this announcement, it sounds like they're moving on to paid expansion packs now.

So, that sounds pretty darn finished to me.

I suppose one definition of "unfinished" might be "doesn't have every single feature that I, personally, want it to have," which would be true for lots of folks, including me.  But that's clearly a ridiculous definition, since it's physically and economically impossible for any company to provide every feature that every user anywhere might want (including the mutually contradictory ones), forever, for free.  So I'll assume you don't mean that.

Unless you're using the term "finished" in some way I'm unfamiliar with?

Well my bad for not actually making my point clear . by finished i meant getting rid of the placeholders in the stock game .Parts for example. Just a qiuck glance tells me (not others maybe) there's a LOT left incomplete . The mk2 command pod , see all those rcs ports? what they do now? nothing. Engines , a complete mess . vacuum engines have the tiniest nozzles on the planet and atmospherics ones are , huge .

Anyway i agree i was exaggerating maybe quite a bit in my first post and also agree with the point of games being business and thus having to generate revenue . However I'm worried about paying for the stuff that should have been done a while ago , BUT I'm happy to pay for new stuff 

Edited March 17, 2017 by Alpha_Mike_741
Typos

[Cooly568]

I really want to bring myself to like the idea here, and I love the idea of the node based mission editor, but... everything beyond that sounds, somewhat pointless if your a modder and are willing to deal with mod clunkiness.

I know we've had updates in the past, like 1.2, Kerbnet was just a replacement for the RemoteTech mod, but Squad had a cleaner implementation of the mod which functions very well. So I have no issue with them replacing Contract Configurator, because it's clunky for in-experienced creators, but putting it behind a pay-wall is what gets me.

Yes, KSP has given me more value than any other game ever, at I think 2500 hours, that means I paid half of a penny for every hour I've spent in this game. 1.2 does feel like a definitive "finished version" of the game, but, I would of liked to see this in an update, and not an expansion, I see it separating the community in a way due to custom contracts being behind a paywall. Would that mean a player with the DLC would be able to make and play contracts, but the DLC-less player wouldn't be able to make or play? Or would they be able to just play? The way they explain the effects of the expansion is abstract. Would it give more to modders at the cost of splitting the community between DLC and DLC-less players?

But, the corporate machine runs on funds, and KSP probably isn't getting any more, it's a game past it's release by, a good year or two now, and I'd take a guess that income is drooping. It's either make an update that might get more people to buy the game, or make the fabled expansion packs. And I respect that decision, because it was either this, or hope the modding community can keep the game afloat with no income for the company. So as much as I can sit and whine about this expansion pack not being a free update, I think for the 15 dollars I paid for this game, I got 15 free updates. That's 1 dollar per update. So paying, say, 5 dollars for an expansion pack after all this time is totally fine.

On the critical hand though, I can't stop thinking about these new parts, they'll be Squad made, yes, but we have a good few, massive part packs that probably add the same parts, give or take art style. That's, good and all, and I like more stock parts, but, I can't get over that thought. 

As a longtime KSP player, I'll be purchasing it even if I don't get it for free.

When did I buy this game anyways?

March of 2012? Holy crap, it's been that long? Five years as of the last couple weeks?

Good lord.

Also I paid 10$, woops. Didn't even notice.

Yeah, Squad, I'll put aside my meager complaints, I was down with The Cyrpt of the Necrodancer's 7$ DLC, don't price this anything above what it's worth like Ubisoft did with Watch_Dog 2's Human Conditions, and we'll be fine.

Thanks for keeping the game alive my dudes.

My only issue with the DLC would be if players and mods were split between two versions, but with how this game is built, that probably won't happen.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Cooly568

[Hotaru]

Unsurprisingly, I've expended my supply of "likes" for the day, but I agree with everything you said...

23 minutes ago, Snark said:

 there's no such thing as "should".

...except this. There's no such thing as must, surely (beyond the obvious must turn a profit), but should is completely subjective. What I think Squad should do, what you think they should do, what they think they should do, all of those things are perfectly valid opinions. Of course some of the rationales behind those assertions might be proven right or wrong if they actually did do the things we think they "should" do, but that doesn't make the initial assertions invalid.

For instance, I stand by my comment that parachutes should be free-update material, not paid-DLC material. Not must but should. Because, in my opinion, making people pay for them is bad form. Not necessarily bad for business, but bad form, in the same way microtransactions, while possibly good for business, would be bad form. I think paying for Kerbal survivability crosses the line from "additional content" to "pay-to-win," and if that were the only thing in the DLC I almost certainly wouldn't be buying it. Fortunately that is far from the only thing in the DLC, so it doesn't really color my enthusiasm for the expansion as a whole (I'm really looking forward to new Soviet-style parts!), but it is still something I notice and dislike.

[Cooly568]

3 minutes ago, Hotaru said:

For instance, I stand by my comment that parachutes should be free-update material, not paid-DLC material. Not must but should.

Some of the stuff, some of the parts, and the chutes do seem a little, off to be in a DLC. But the "professionally created" missions and the mission editor GUI and the stuff you can't really get from mods sounds a lot more rationalized being in a DLC.

[Just Jim]

17 hours ago, UomoCapra said:

Kerbal Personal Parachute: Your astronauts will now be safer in case of imminent disasters with all new personal parachutes. So next time Jeb is in trouble and all systems are failing, you can simply eject him and activate his parachute. Then, you just have to hope, there’s an atmosphere to slow him down...

Wait.... something just occurred to me... 

Kerbal Skydiving Challenges!!!  

[Hotaru]

Again, out of likes.

Just now, Cooly568 said:

Some of the stuff, some of the parts, and the chutes do seem a little, off to be in a DLC. But the "professionally created" missions and the mission editor GUI and the stuff you can't really get from mods sounds a lot more rationalized being in a DLC.

One thing I find kind of entertaining about this whole thing is that while lots of us assert that one part or another of the DLC should be stock, everybody seems to think different parts of it should be stock. For me, it's parachutes. Parts seem like perfect DLC material. Some other people say the parts should be stock, still others that the mission editor should be stock, and so on. And if they made everything that anyone said should be stock, stock, I think the DLC would be down to just the alternate spacesuit.

So on the whole, I'm not that bothered about it. In the end I have no problem going along with Squad's judgement about what does and doesn't belong in DLCs. That won't stop me having my own opinions on the subject, but it won't stop me buying them either.

 

[jokiab]

Sweet! I was hoping for a DLC of some kind! For me the paid hour is down to 0.099$ so Im not disappointed for a paid DLC!

Its cool to make the classic "create - play - share" feature, where you put the creation in the customers hands, like other games also have. But I would also hope to see some new features in the game. Where they maybe take some of these must have mods into the stock game like they did with the signal gameplay. 

 

Keep up the good work! 

 

[storm6436]

Eh, would've been nice to get a rocket part revamp and a graphics update before cranking out DLC... Finish what you started instead of building on an unfinished foundation... *sigh*. 

[Malah]

A mod developed for stock KSP will work for KSP with the extensions?

Mission Builder will be based on the work done for the tutorial?

Edited March 17, 2017 by Malah

[aquilux]

17 hours ago, UomoCapra said:

"KSP is by now a mature game"

Oh, is that so... So where is the stock DV meter for the VAB and in flight?

[minepagan]

@Snark (not quoting, but I would like to adress a few things you've said.)

I most certainly agree that Squad needs money. However, I don't think this DLC is the right thing to do. As I and others have already mentioned, most (if not all) of it can be done with existing mods.

Some things that I would pay money for, that cannot be accomplished by mods (at least well) would be, as I mentioned, multiplayer or AI. Heck, if they added mod support for console (paid or not) I'd buy both the console version and whatever DLC was required.

Changing focus, I have to agree that KSP is NOT finished. I think most people will agree with my definition of finished - the devs have fulfilled all their promises, and there are no (or few) game-breaking bugs.

Now, as KSP is built on Unity, the latter is not always in control of the Devs. Some things are beyond what they can manipulate, and that is understandable. But the first point still stands - the devs should fulfill their previous promises before moving on. Promises like the sorely-needed part revamp for older parts.

TL;DR: I'm down for DLCs, the devs need money, but this is not the way to do it.

Edited March 17, 2017 by minepagan

[boborene]

5 hours ago, Woodstar said:

KSP finally succumbed to the DLC virus.

I must agree.

[JPLRepo]

12 minutes ago, Malah said:

A mod developed for stock KSP will work for KSP with the extensions?

Mission Builder will be based on the work done for the tutorial?

Yes.
No.

[Cooly568]

1 minute ago, JPLRepo said:

A mod developed for stock KSP will work for KSP with the extensions?

Yes.

Okay that's good to hear. What about the other way around, and more specifically custom missions?

[Curveball Anders]

Nice and reasonable, I'll grab it as soon as it's available.

 

[metalmouth7]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

"This expansion is wrong / stupid because the stuff that's in there is already available via mods."

Some examples of this sentiment:

There are two answers to this sentiment.

The simple, "market-based" answer is:  Well, if you're right and there's literally no reason for anyone to buy such a thing, then the problem fixes itself, right?  Nobody will buy the expansion and it'll be a big money-loser.  In which case I would assume that Squad would make the smart business decision and just turn the lights out on KSP-- no point in throwing more money down a hole, if people aren't willing to spend money on it.  On the other hand, if the KSP community is enthusiastically in favor, and lots of people rush out to hand over their hard-earned cash for the expansion, then by definition it's worth it, yes?

So, that's a simple, self-answering question.   We just wait and see what happens.    You think the expansion's useless, so you keep your money in your wallet.  Other people run out and buy.  And then we see how successful it turns out to be.  (Though based on the large number of enthusiastic please-take-my-money posts in this thread, it kinda sounds to me like there's at least a reasonable shot at success.)

The slightly longer answer is:  No.  It's not the same.  Mods can't provide the "same stuff", other than very superficially.

You miss the point of this issue.

KSP is not a finished game. Numerous bugs dating as far back as 0.19 (many of them extremely serious,) have sat unresolved since being reported nearly 4 years ago. Major features introduced in 0.90, and others dating from long before, introduced only in placeholder format have been left unfinished for well over a year while the game has been announced as being "finished."

It's not a matter of it being stupid because the content is available from mods, or because it's a bunch of simple-to-make assets that the community has almost certainly implemented in a better fashion. It's a matter of it being stupid because Squad has no business making a cash grab like this when they have yet to finish the game itself. This is anti-consumer and shows a serious lack of honesty regarding the state of the "complete" game they've been selling to people for years now. Even more so when the funding they were collecting during Early Access was being funneled to projects other than KSP itself, while the game was developed on a shoestring budget, if the accounts of the former team members that have come forward are to be believed.

Edited March 17, 2017 by metalmouth7