Why Don't A Lot of People Use Making History?

[Johnster_Space_Program]

So its been out offically for 1 year. The DLC of Making History. Besides Using The DLC parts, why does almost no one use making history for making missions now? Is it not good enough, or does it have too many problems?

[Mikki]

I am actually growing another mission for the public, might be finished by the end of the year...

Have you done one yourself?

[Johnster_Space_Program]

Yes, ive made multiple ones. Like https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/181743-mun-exploration-part-1-kurveyor-1/

[Dafni]

Personally, for my own play time, I just dont see the point.

I am a sandbox player, always been, do my own stories and missions. Was always good enough for me.

I believe I might look into it when I run out of things I still want to do in the game, but so far i dont see this point coming anytime soon.

[Geonovast]

I've just never had any interest in the mission builder.  I bought it for the parts.  I even installed a mod that prevents the mission builder assets from loading since I'll never use them.

[Barzon]

@Geonovast link to that mod please?

[Geonovast]

1 minute ago, Barzon Kerman said:

@Geonovast link to that mod please?

 

[klesh]

26 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

 I even installed a mod that prevents the mission builder assets from loading since I'll never use them.

Could you link to that, or maybe share via PM how you accomplished it? Edit:  Ooh, beat me to it! Thank you for linking.

 

 

For me, I only wanted the parts.  I feel like the entire premise of seeing a challenge forum or reddit being popular, and then formalizing challenges into mission that require tens of hours (or more) to make was a poor one from the start.   Why bother with all that mission coding when you can just type your idea out in plain english on the forums/reddit?  I never once participated in a community challenge; I've always found motivation for playing within myself.  I don't want to compete really.  Wait, I lied... I think I once did a fly to the island airfield and back challenge... something that was pre-Making History and didnt require someone doing it in a mission builder.

Edited March 13, 2019 by klesh

[DMagic]

Making Less History has the unfortunate side effect of also disabling the alternate launch pads and the alternate Kerbal uniforms, which were two of the nicer aspects of Making History. 

That said, the answer to original question seems pretty obvious. The Mission Builder is a feature that no asked for, that is completely cut off from the rest of the game, and is generally too complicated to work with.

Its lack of success is completely unsurprising. What is more surprising to me is how buggy and poorly thought-out many of the MH parts are. Many suffer from easily fixable drag issues (that have been reported on, with fixes, since about the time MH came out), some of the pods seem specialized to the point of being overly difficult to use outside of their intended purpose, and the best parts added to the game, engine plates, are also tied to a badly designed decoupler system that breaks many of the assumptions that KSP makes about how crafts and staging works.

The whole thing inspires very little confidence in the prospect of future DLCs.

Edited March 13, 2019 by DMagic

[Damon]

I love MH.

I love the fact that you can select which launchpad you want to launch from right under the launch button. Also the fact that after so many years you could finally support Squad for a few extra dollars just to support them for the future of KSP.

But yes, I never used the mission builder and probably not going to anytime soon.

[JadeOfMaar]

2 hours ago, Johnster_Space_Program said:

So its been out offically for 1 year. The DLC of Making History. Besides Using The DLC parts, why does almost no one use making history for making missions now? Is it not good enough, or does it have too many problems?

The problem is, the Mission Builder was targeted towards the Reddit Challenge crowd and the one-off/one-shot nature thereof but it should have been targeted towards making Career Mode more interesting, dynamic, non-linear. That was a major missed shot and something that should have been openly consulted because of how great the divide is between these play modes.

The other major problem that Making History had was that it collided with Kerbal Konstructs and/or Kopernicus and interfered with gameplay involving either mods, and with Kerbin-replacing planet packs that explicitly did not want Squad's extra launch sites to appear (and the small issue of where they appear cannot be controlled).

[Poodmund]

Kerbal Space Program is a sandbox game, right? Where the player is able to tackle their objective from many multiple angles using a massive catalogue of parts and contraptions to achieve many solutions to their own imposed goals.

Now introduce the Mission Editor and Missions... imposing strict limitations on the player to play within the boundaries of the imagination and competence of the mission creator in a much more linear fashion. Errr... I thought KSP was a sandbox game?

I think this is the predominant reason as to why the Mission Editor is almost unanimously unused. Its almost the antithesis of KSP's genre.

I think it's quite telling the most praised additions of MH are the VAB/SPH switcher and Launchpad Selector. These are not new gameplay modes, new parts or new fangled features in the most part. They are just well implemented, streamlined QoL additions that augment the gameplay we are accustomed to.

Edited March 13, 2019 by Poodmund

[klesh]

What sucks is that Squad, or Private Division or whatever hired gun is making this game now has never acknowledged this misstep, and is seemingly making a new DLC called Serenity without askign the community what we want to have.  I hope they haven't presumed their way to another 56% rated DLC.

[CobaltWolf]

2 minutes ago, klesh said:

What sucks is that Squad, or Private Division or whatever hired gun is making this game now has never acknowledged this misstep, and is seemingly making a new DLC called Serenity without askign the community what we want to have.  I hope they haven't presumed their way to another 56% rated DLC.

It's still Squad, from what I've heard Take2 has been pretty hands off so far when it comes to the actual development.

[AlphaMensae]

3 hours ago, Poodmund said:

I think it's quite telling the most praised additions of MH are the VAB/SPH switcher and Launchpad Selector. 

Pood, the VAB/SPH switcher is standard in 1.4.  MH just brings the launchpad selector (and the alternate launch sites).

[KerikBalm]

I use it to place launch pads for craft testing... similar to hyperedit

[schwank]

I've been playing with the mission editor and I think it's actually really cool. You can do a lot of stuff that makes the game feel more alive and interactive. But the problem is it's super hard to use it. It's a real barrier to trying to do cool stuff.

All the new parts are awesome though. My favorite thing is to continue dialing my Apollo rocket more and more realistic.

[KSK]

Okay - full disclosure time first. I didn't like the business model behind Making History.

Frankly, I think it's a bit of a cheek (or a lot of a cheek) when the signature feature of a paid-for expansion is a toolset for the playerbase to make their own content. Particularly when the base game for that expansion has been leaning on player-created content almost since the first alpha build. It would have been different if the Mission editor had been a bonus feature on top of a more in-depth expansion but... well as far as I could see (I never bought MH) it wasn't. I saw quite a few reviews which basically said that the expansion as a whole was a bit meh but gave it the benefit of the doubt on the assumption that the KSP community would make a ton of new content with it. I don't think I saw any reviews to the effect of 'buy this - it's great as it is and the Mission editor is the icing on the cake.'

But enough of my personal views on that topic.

Making History suffered from a number of other problems in my opinion.

1.   It shipped with bugs in the editor and broken content in the Missions, which then needed time to be patched out. Not the best way to make a good first impression and get people excited about an expansion. By the time the bugs had been ironed out and the Missions fixed, the moment had passed and people had moved on.

2.  Beyond bug fixing, it's received almost no official support or interest since launch. We had a brief season of 'Mission of the Week' and that's about it. To paraphrase an old software development meme - you need to eat your own dogfood if you expect your customers to eat it too. If Squad couldn't be bothered / weren't able to make any exciting new stuff with their Mission editor, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the community decided it couldn't be bothered either.

3.   Stock KSP has an almost complete lack of interesting game mechanics to build Missions around. Take an Apollo 13 style mission for example. Something breaks on your spacecraft - what happens next? Better hope it's fixable with an engineer (and that you brought an engineer along in the first place), or that you built in a redundant system. Otherwise it's most likely back to the VAB to try again. Not particularly exciting. 

4.  In the absence of decent game mechanics, then you need some kind of story or narrative to build an interesting mission around. Easier said than done (and writing KSP fiction is something I do have experience of) and that's assuming the Mission editor is set up for easy storytelling in the first place. This puts another barrier in front of wannabe Mission creators. Not only do they have to figure out how to make the editor do what they want, but they need to be writers, or storyboard artists too. I salute anyone who actually posted a Mission.

 

[merlinux]

Read quite a few posts here and wanted to add my opinion (which it seems many share). Couldnt care less about mission builder, bought this DLC solely for the parts (engine plates are neet),the new launchpads and to give some bucks to squad as this game has been in my life since 2013... Actually missed buying it in alpha by 2 months (bought it aug 2013 when it came on steam) and I was happy to purchase it.

But in the end I'm still playing this game like I used to 6 years ago, in sandbox with heaps of mods and I don't think I will ever use the mission builder. I havent even finished a career mode yet (I mean the tech tree). I tried I just could never get into career mode... I'm pretty sure I will never try the mission builder.

Its only worth the money because I know the thousand of hours Ive spent playing that piece of software.

But I'm sure some people might enjoy the mission building, like some enjoy career mode...

[Ratwerke_Actual]

I use the Mission Builder as a stock HyperEdit to test designs.

[kerbiloid]

I've purchased Making History for the Mission Builder as a Sandbox mission logger.
(Writing the details by hands was too boring).

I had and have no interest at all in the historical craft parts.

[KerbolExplorer]

Ok heres the word of someone who owns the DLC and used it.

 

Quoting here my steam review

"so first of all the parts are bad,you can get them all,better and free via mods"

Thats entirely true,take a look at blue dog disings bureau.His parts are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than @SQUAD`s parts.

"The new launch sites are bad aswell"

Ok lets be real here and admit that literally my parrot can do a better job that whoever made these launchsites.

Ok the models are nice,But.......Take a look at the rest.......Like baikaneur,Baikanur?.....Or was it BaijkkaajofshnaiglnoasklaakjaifjoafjoiaJOUJOHGOnur       ITS LITERALY A PAD IN MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.....No VAB,no decorations no nothing.Like you they could atleast placed a barn  VAB there.....

 

And dont get me started with the mission builder.....Actually i triggered my self there welp no turning back now...

So when i first played the expansion i played the mission building tutorial....Actually I tried because it didnt work

And the mission were boring.....Its a sandbox game not a Ifyounotdothishowitellyouimnuckingyou game And the mission buider strictly takes the second aproach...Something that hightly doesnt fit KSP.

 

Now why not many people use the expansion?

Here Look yourself:https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200?snr=2_9_100006__apphubheader

57% positive reviews....the other 43% are negative reviews.And most of them say what i do...

 

And to top it all off the mission making is pretty well dead..Like....Hum.....For some reason @SQUAD stoped doing its "mission of the week"   because people arent making missions.Like atleast the steam comunity is a little active making missions....But here on the forums?....Apart from the occasional mission that pops up nothing else...

 

[M.M.I]

If the mission builder could be used to create contracts for the career play... One can only wish for...

[cantab]

I played maybe two or three of the stock missions. They're kind of fun, but I think the issue is they make KSP into a very different kind of game. KSP's player base has got used to a persistent sandbox game, and failing to integrate the missions into the main game modes was a big omission IMHO.

It brings to mind the game Children of a Dead Earth. It has orbital mechanics, it has realistic spacecraft, it has craft design. At first glance it looks like "Kerbal with guns". But it's structured as a series of missions, and the result is that it plays more like a puzzle game rather than a creative sandbox. Making History Missions are doing that to KSP. And while CoaDE is a fun game, its structure has meant it never grabbed anywhere near as much of my time as KSP has.

Plus the stock missions are iffy anyway. A lot of them are like, "Do X", and then at the last minute you're told "Oh can you do Y as well?". It makes sense for missions themed around coping with a disaster, but not so much those that are meant to just be a routine flight like the Sputnik one.

[Pirke]

I recently got this DLC, and I do like the missions. It's been a long while since I played KSP (before 1.0), and I really enjoyed the Acapello-13. It makes the game more unexpected when stuff actually goes wrong, and they try to add a little story to it all, instead of just another "go here, make this orbit, grind science, etc". Changing objectives, like during launch at 10k altitude "yeah, abort and land, we forgot something" is fun to me.

 

I do wish they added many more interesting missions, most of them feel like an enhanced tutorial though...