1.4.1 bugged to all hell. unplayable.

[Lightzy]

Campagin mode..

First bug, I do the first 2 missions on hard. Gain infinity money rewards. Enough to upgrade the whole kerbal center etc.
So I do a clean install, figure maybe maybe, and it fixes it.

With the clean install,
I do a 'fly space tourist to suborbital spaceflight", the contract never resolves.
It shows that their itinerary is complete but but the mission is incomplete. I figure ok, I.. don't know.
So I take another such mission and complete it, but this time they don't even register the itinerary as complete ...

what how can you break the game entirely and release it without seemingly playing through campaign mode even once? even loveing once

[Wallygator]

There are a wide number of issues/bugs in play here.  If you can, you might consider posting a bug report via the designated channels.

[Gorman]

15 hours ago, Lightzy said:

Campagin mode..

First bug, I do the first 2 missions on hard. Gain infinity money rewards. Enough to upgrade the whole kerbal center etc.
So I do a clean install, figure maybe maybe, and it fixes it.
 

Did you activate a strategy in the strategy building. Try a campaign without using that building.

[Just Jim]

15 hours ago, Lightzy said:

Campagin mode..

First bug, I do the first 2 missions on hard. Gain infinity money rewards. Enough to upgrade the whole kerbal center etc.
So I do a clean install, figure maybe maybe, and it fixes it.

With the clean install,
I do a 'fly space tourist to suborbital spaceflight", the contract never resolves.
It shows that their itinerary is complete but but the mission is incomplete. I figure ok, I.. don't know.
So I take another such mission and complete it, but this time they don't even register the itinerary as complete ...

what how can you break the game entirely and release it without seemingly playing through campaign mode even once? even loveing once

This is a known bug, and was already reported. 

 

[Lightzy]

There's bugs and there's NOT PLAYTESTING EVEN ONCE

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Lightzy said:

There's bugs and there's NOT PLAYTESTING EVEN ONCE

The bug is actually random (or triggered by specific actions or settings) so can be hard to find. 

Although I do agree that playtesting appears to have been pretty much non-existent considering I also found a different game breaking bug 5 minutes into the expansion, lol

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Lightzy said:

There's bugs and there's NOT PLAYTESTING EVEN ONCE

With all due respect, this statement is 100% not true. But no matter how long an update is tested, and by how many people, in something as complex as KSP, bugs still slip through. It's happened before this, and it will likely happen again. Please be patient, this one is being addressed.

[Mark Kerbin]

1 hour ago, Lightzy said:

There's bugs and there's NOT PLAYTESTING EVEN ONCE

Are you playing right now? Didn't you just report a bug? 

Congrats. You are play testing. And by doing so you are helping the devs improve this already awesome game.

BTW hit ALT +f12, The contracts cheat menu should be able to force complete it. If all else fails theres always notepad and the persistence files

Also lets be honest. Squad is a "small" team, and doesn't really have the time/money or resources to truly play test a game. Now I'm sure they take a look at new stuff to make sure it works most of the time, and then check out stuff that could be effected, but its not like they can really go through and put everything in every situation on every sort of system. Thats what this crazy community is for. Finding obvious bugs that got missed in dev, then dive deeper and find the kind of bugs only someone up at midnight living off caffeine could cause.

[DerekL1963]

17 minutes ago, Mark Kerbin said:

Also lets be honest. Squad is a "small" team, and doesn't really have the time/money or resources to truly play test a game.

Yes, let's be honest.  The problem isn't deep bugs, the type discovered by "truly" playtesting a game.  It's simple, basic stuff.  Things like the installer installing into "KSP131".  Like two new engines having their thrust vector and models off-center.  Like bugs being found in canned missions.  Like...  well, you get the picture.  These aren't bugs that require hundreds of man-hours to find the strange combo of circumstances that trigger them.
 

21 minutes ago, Mark Kerbin said:

Now I'm sure they take a look at new stuff to make sure it works most of the time,

In the case of the new engines (and I haven't yet mentioned the stats swap), it's obvious they didn't do even the most basic QA.  1.4/1.4.1 and MH are riddled with stuff that shouldn't have gotten "missed in dev".

[Mark Kerbin]

Just now, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, let's be honest.  The problem isn't deep bugs, the type discovered by "truly" playtesting a game.  It's simple, basic stuff.  Things like the installer installing into "KSP131".  Like two new engines having their thrust vector and models off-center.  Like bugs being found in canned missions.  Like...  well, you get the picture.  These aren't bugs that require hundreds of man-hours to find the strange combo of circumstances that trigger them.
 

In the case of the new engines (and I haven't yet mentioned the stats swap), it's obvious they didn't do even the most basic QA.  1.4/1.4.1 and MH are riddled with stuff that shouldn't have gotten "missed in dev".

Ok yeah. MH is a mess. Thats much is fair.

[Greenfire32]

32 minutes ago, Mark Kerbin said:

Are you playing right now? Didn't you just report a bug? 

Congrats. You are play testing. And by doing so you are helping the devs improve this already awesome game.

No matter how big or small a dev team is, this doesn't fly once the game is "officially released." We're only beta testers when the game is in "early access." After KSP hit the big 1.0 status marker and "launched," we stopped being "consumer-partners" and started being "consumers." We're no longer "play-testing," we're being pushed a broken product.

Squad wanted to rush that 1.0 threshold before the game was really ready for it and...well this is what happens. I wish they'd stop pushing these arbitrary deadlines and just "do it right" rather than try to "do it quick." And the thing is, Squad has a track record of releasing an update only to follow up with two, or three, or eight hotfixes in the coming weeks and they don't address small things, they address huge things like wheels causing RUDs or orbits drifting into dark space for no reason. And I know that Squad isn't the exception to the rule when it comes to things like this. I see this happening more and more often and it's even bled into mediums other than gaming, so this isn't me griping about Squad in particular so much as it is me griping about how the entire industry has gotten more relaxed about what is acceptable and what isn't.

Ever since post-launch updates have taken over the gaming industry, many (if not all) game developers have adopted the "sell first, fix later" approach with some even going so far as "sell first, fix...maybe? We've already got your money, so..."

Maybe it's because I come from a time when games were finished before they were shipped and devs didn't have the option to just "fix it later." Had to wait longer, but also never had major bugs in major releases. Hell even some of the more well-known bugs still had to be actively sought out by the community.

 

(Insert obligatory "get off my lawn!" here)

[Kerbart]

22 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Yes, let's be honest.  The problem isn't deep bugs, the type discovered by "truly" playtesting a game.  It's simple, basic stuff.  Things like the installer installing into "KSP131".  Like two new engines having their thrust vector and models off-center.  Like bugs being found in canned missions.  Like...  well, you get the picture.  These aren't bugs that require hundreds of man-hours to find the strange combo of circumstances that trigger them.
 

In the case of the new engines (and I haven't yet mentioned the stats swap), it's obvious they didn't do even the most basic QA.  1.4/1.4.1 and MH are riddled with stuff that shouldn't have gotten "missed in dev".

I’d like to give Squad and the QA team some slack—I’m sure they’re working very hard on it. But I do agree, that from a customer perspective, it is infuriating to run into issues that, at least at the very surface of it, would have been discovered with a minimum amount of playtime. And these are not Heisenbugs or edge cases either, but rather easy to reproduce with perfectly normal game play.

I hope that as far as new parts are concerned, Squad will adapt some kind of checklist to go over alignment, specs, etc. 

[Mako]

25 minutes ago, Mark Kerbin said:

Also lets be honest. Squad is a "small" team, and doesn't really have the time/money or resources to truly play test a game.

Maybe this used to be true when Squad was working on KSP for themselves, but now that Take-Two owns KSP Squad has whatever resources Take-Two chooses to provide. So far we've been told that Take-Two has provided access to a QA team to assist Squad with development.

If Take-Two wants to provide more resources, they can at any time. They are certainly big and rich enough to make anything happen. They could also have given Squad more time on this update and expansion if they wanted, but it seems like they thought it'd be better for business to stick to an apparently arbitrary release date.

This is no longer scrappy little Squad working by themselves on the unexpected, runaway hit KSP, it's Take-Two's product and what they do with it and how they release updates is directly indicative of Take-Two's priorities. For better and for worse...

[klesh]

Yes, the Making History expansion does not feel polished at all. Feels like it was released well before it was “finished”.  They had a year and a half to make it.  I don’t think this was worth waiting a year and a half for. I don’t want to wait another year and a half for DLC #2 if this is the level of quality of the new products.

7 missions? Thats it? Oh, theyre giving us more missions, per the weekly. Great, but I bought this on release day, not a month after.  My bank was certainly charged on release day as well. Sure, the focus is the mission builder but you need to buy MH to play the missions too.   Not everyone who buys MH is a programmer or has the know how to make missions. 

Not only is there tons of little bugs that sour the experience, but there is a lack of little bonuses or details that would have “wowed” me with contents of the Expansion.   Where is the new splash screen?  Why are my kerbals still floating around in the old spacesuits?   Where are the new mission flags?   Wheres the new music?  Where is Soyuz? Where is tons of kerbal artwork for the mission banners; should we have to go hunt down old low res pics online and use them?  Where is the new manufacturer for the Russian parts? Why is the new launchsite literally just a launchpad plopped on seemingly random terrain with no infrastructure around it?  Where is the “surprise” stuff that they didnt talk about but included as an awesome bonus? Its just not there.  Though, when juxtaposed against what we actually received, the above stuff sounds wildy luxurious.

 

If I had to give this Expansion a school grade, it would be a C-, which numerically is in the 70-74 range.

 

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by klesh

[squidflakes]

1 hour ago, Mako said:

Maybe this used to be true when Squad was working on KSP for themselves, but now that Take-Two owns KSP Squad has whatever resources Take-Two chooses to provide. So far we've been told that Take-Two has provided access to a QA team to assist Squad with development.

If Take-Two wants to provide more resources, they can at any time. They are certainly big and rich enough to make anything happen. They could also have given Squad more time on this update and expansion if they wanted, but it seems like they thought it'd be better for business to stick to an apparently arbitrary release date.

This is no longer scrappy little Squad working by themselves on the unexpected, runaway hit KSP, it's Take-Two's product and what they do with it and how they release updates is directly indicative of Take-Two's priorities. For better and for worse...

Before my wife started working in game development, I would have agreed with this post, but the reality is quite different from what you're saying here. 

Take-Two isn't a non-stop spring of cash and assigning a QA team that's new to a product doesn't ensure that they are going to find every bug. 

Time is also the most expensive luxury you can have in game development. Once release dates are set, the drive to get something out on-time overrides most other factors. If a release date is missed there are often steep penalties along the entire supply or distribution chain, usually written in to the contract with the publisher. The publisher is going to do everything they can to ensure those release dates are met, so buggy unfinished code is preferable to a cash penalty. 

Does it suck for players? Of course it does. However, we've all been playing games long enough to know that this is par for the course. 

[klgraham1013]

22 minutes ago, squidflakes said:

This is par for the course...

...in the past decade.

[linuxgurugamer]

10 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

...in the past decade.

Far longer than that, I'm  afraid.  I remember downloading patches with modems back in the 80's

[klgraham1013]

Just now, linuxgurugamer said:

Far longer than that, I'm  afraid.  I remember downloading patches with modems back in the 80's

You had a modem in the 80s?  I was mostly a console gamer until the 2000s.  Back when you got what was on the disk and dealt with the consequences. 

[Wrench Head]

Wheres the testing team most company's have?

I have done many Alpha and beta test on games and their was always one Dev. there working with us.

But I fill now we have entered into the new world of no mistake programing and It must be your computer, a false positive, or YOU as they say that has broke the game.

I just plan to stick with 1.31 it works well all mods seem to work ok that I use and have made.

 

[Mako]

1 hour ago, squidflakes said:

Before my wife started working in game development, I would have agreed with this post, but the reality is quite different from what you're saying here. 

Take-Two isn't a non-stop spring of cash...

With all respect to your insight into the industry, which is very welcome, I have to stop you there. Take-Two publishes GTAV which is still printing money for them. There is no shortage of resources available if the really wanted to do something. In fact, they delay much higher profile releases all the time.

The reality is that KSP is a tiny thing with a small audience compared to their other properties. I'm not saying that as a business they shouldn't treat it as such, rather I'm saying that if they wanted to treat it better they have the capability.

At the end of the day it comes down to making business decisions. I believe we both agree on that much. Take-Two will always make choices that are best for its business, as opposed to an indie developer without a publisher that may choose to make choices that are best for its products since it doesn't have to answer to shareholders.

Ultimately my point still stands: if Take-Two was serious about making sure KSP releases were very professional and high quality they have the resources to do so. Pleasing customers and earning the good will of a small community is obviously worth less to them than meeting their fiscal year end deadline to please shareholders. I'm not saying I expect them to act otherwise. I'm saying that excusing the release quality, or lack thereof, based on the idea that Squad is small and lacks resources is not really understanding the whole story.

The release is the result of business decisions. Business decisions don't make games better, but they can allow companies to continue making games. I do understand the situation, but I also think there's plenty of room for improvement if Take-Two cared to try.

[Bill Phil]

21 hours ago, Mark Kerbin said:

Are you playing right now? Didn't you just report a bug? 

Congrats. You are play testing. And by doing so you are helping the devs improve this already awesome game.

BTW hit ALT +f12, The contracts cheat menu should be able to force complete it. If all else fails theres always notepad and the persistence files

Also lets be honest. Squad is a "small" team, and doesn't really have the time/money or resources to truly play test a game. Now I'm sure they take a look at new stuff to make sure it works most of the time, and then check out stuff that could be effected, but its not like they can really go through and put everything in every situation on every sort of system. Thats what this crazy community is for. Finding obvious bugs that got missed in dev, then dive deeper and find the kind of bugs only someone up at midnight living off caffeine could cause.

Yeah, but KSP is a released game. It's out of alpha/beta. If it was in that phase of development, sure, we would be the play testers. But that's no longer the case. We're customers. 

It's pretty obvious that KSP wasn't ready for 1.0. But it's too late now. 

Funnily enough I haven't run into too many problems. The occasional crash, but that's normal for me. The most stable version I ever played was 1.3.1...

[Wallygator]

OP rants about bugs.  Thread transitions into deep philosophical discussions about game industry/Dev/QA/Profits/Capitalism... (Theme from Beauty and Beast Playing in background)

Bottom line: Post like this all as much as desired - but perhaps simultaneously consider creating a viable bug report <-- only way things can get better faster even with unlimited developer resources thrown at problem.

[Kerbart]

20 hours ago, Mako said:

With all respect to your insight into the industry, which is very welcome, I have to stop you there. Take-Two publishes GTAV which is still printing money for them. There is no shortage of resources available if the really wanted to do something. In fact, they delay much higher profile releases all the time.

But that’s not how it works. T2 is the publisher. It takes the game to the market, advertises it, and yes, probably sets budgets and direction. But in the end it’s the studio that develops the game and that’s Squad. And unless T2 makes the decision to really invest in KSP they will let Squad move along as if it’s an independent company (which, to my knowledge, it still is. T2 bought the IP, not necessarily Squad itself; Squad is merely a not-so-independent contractor).

Nobody goes to a concert of a small band and complains they’re not getting a Stones/Foo Fighters/Whatever big band stage and performance. “But they’re published by Sony! They make tons of money!” That’s just not how it works.

[klgraham1013]

3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

The most stable version I ever played was 1.3.1...

Agreed.

[Mako]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

But that’s not how it works. T2 is the publisher. It takes the game to the market, advertises it, and yes, probably sets budgets and direction. But in the end it’s the studio that develops the game and that’s Squad. And unless T2 makes the decision to really invest in KSP they will let Squad move along as if it’s an independent company (which, to my knowledge, it still is. T2 bought the IP, not necessarily Squad itself; Squad is merely a not-so-independent contractor).

It's Take-Two's game. If they want another developer to work on it, they can ditch Squad in an instant. If they want to bolster Squad by providing additional resources, as they have in the case of the QA team that Squad has told us about, they can do that too. If Take-Two wants to delay release because the product is not up to their standards, they can make that call at any time.

Yes, Squad is the developer, but they are working for Take-Two. Take-Two calls the shots. If Squad says they need more time for an update, Take-Two can choose to listen and respect Squad's recommendation, or they can choose to say Squad has to meet the deadline. If Squad doesn't meet expectations, they might find themselves no longer the developer of KSP.

As I said, I get that everyone is making business decisions, but I also think it's a shame that quality suffers for it. This release could have been delayed to spend a little more time finding and fixing the most obvious problems. Take-Two either chose to release anyway, or Squad told Take-Two everything was ready and Take-Two trusted them. Either way, it is indicative of the attention and care that Take-Two is currently giving to their property. Which as I said previously is not completely unreasonable given the limited popularity and small community that KSP has.

But I like KSP and want the best for it, so I'm internally conflicted between what I want for KSP and what I expect as logical business decisions.