Kerbal Space Program DLC: “Breaking Gound” Grand Discussion Thread

[Fearless Son]

It sounds like a big part of your arguments are, "There are mods that to this already but more."  

And uh, okay, I can respect that.  But for me, I tend to go unmodded.  Not because I hate mods, but just because I like what I do to be sharable, I want to make things that make someone with a stock copy of the game look at it and go, "Hey, I could do that!" without having them jump through a bunch of unofficial hoops to get to it.  So as part of the core game, a lot of this appeals to me.  I appreciate the new mechanical parts (which I felt the base game was lacking as I want to make craft that can fit inside a fairing and then unfold into their space configuration once they break atmo and shed the fairing.)  I likewise appreciate that you can now find specific terrain scatters and interact with them.  I like to use Science as a lure to draw me further out, and having those gives me reason to do things like send rovers that can seek out new sites to sample.

[Gameslinx]

4 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

You acknowledge that the developer needs to make money and also that they have probably already sold most of the base games they are going to sell, so what would you do instead?

I kind of feel as if Squad has lost or is losing the connection to the community. From what I see, nobody was asking for part reskins. Shadowzone's video on technical debt, if I recall correctly, mentions that he never asked for that and the community surrounding his channel seemed to agree.

So, in a sense, I feel like Squad reskinned the parts for the sake of it. Whether it's because they didn't like the look of them or needed something flashy to get more sales, we'll never know, but this IS Take Two we're taking about, and they are not unknown for caring less about the consumer and more about the sales.

So... The main problem is their part reskins are a waste of their time. Sure, they added modding support as someone above said, and that's really good, but they just fell victim to it themselves when Restock came out and nobody really cared about the part reskins anymore.

I do think what they're doing here is a step in the right direction but it just isn't anything substantial enough to warrant paying more for this than I paid for the game. I feel like if there was more depth to this, I would be happier about buying the DLC. Perhaps if the terrain was diggable / removable such as terraforming (which is impossible given how the game engine works, and probably too far convoluted to change so far into development), then I'd buy it.

But really? There just isn't much new to do. Kopernicus already has a feature which allows players to gather science from these terrain scatters... I don't understand why I'd pay for this DLC if I could just spend a little longer to install the few mods. Maybe it's because I'm unhappy with squad's track record? If Squad was still an indie developer and not governed by a money hungry company such as Take Two... Maybe I'd be willing to support them a bit more, but ever since the performance improvements in 1.1 I haven't really been impressed since...

They're so out of touch which the community they're adding things mods already add and not innovating and adding something mods can't add. This is where I mentioned multicore support but didn't mean to imply making it a dlc, it would be a more valuable use of time than the part reskins.

13 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

If you were president of Squad, what kind of DLC would you release? What would it contain and why?

Something that mods can't do, or something that the community really wanted.

For example I complain about the bad boring planets, yet mods can do that. But as Squad already visited the parts, the planets stand out as unvisited of neglected. If the community asked enough, I'd improve them. If nobody even asked, I wouldn't touch them. Hell, nearly all of us planet modders are requesting changes to the planets, but .. nobody requested the changes for the parts...?

So, if I was to make a DLC as the head of Squad, I would add gameplay we haven't yet seen. Maybe a storyline or a narrative? And, if I was going to make a DLC just for the planets, I'd add more than just terrain scatters. Every planet should feel unique, so geysers, volcanoes, ravines, organic structures etc (which I do believe should be in the stock game) would make a much better dlc than a few rocks and infernal robotics. 

[Klapaucius]

3 minutes ago, Fearless Son said:

  Not because I hate mods, but just because I like what I do to be sharable

Yes. I use environmental mods and things like Kerbal Engineer, but I am 100% stock on parts for the same reason.

[Phoenix84]

15 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

If Squad was still an indie developer and not governed by a money hungry company such as Take Two... Maybe I'd be willing to support them a bit more, but ever since the performance improvements in 1.1 I haven't really been impressed since...

They're so out of touch which the community they're adding things mods already add and not innovating and adding something mods can't add. This is where I mentioned multicore support but didn't mean to imply making it a dlc, it would be a more valuable use of time than the part reskins.

Being on the receiving end of an acquisition like that, it's not always as it seems.

If the smaller division is even allowed to keep autonomy (as it appears has happened to Squad), they will be expected to pull in their fair share. They won't be receiving handouts from Take2 to stay afloat. If Squad still doesn't pull in enough money, Take2 can still dissolve them, or move the project someplace cheaper. Of course, I also have no doubt Take2 has placed additional restrictions or have changed enough small things to affect the project a bit.

Where I work (huge 10k employee company), each division's financials are tracked. Every dollar coming in can be placed to a particular project and division that brought it in. On the flip side, each expenditure for each project and division is also tracked. If a project is consuming more than it's pulling in, it will be terminated, even if the company as a whole is profitable.

As for being out of touch, well I can't comment on that, as I'm pretty out of touch myself. Though, fair point about you not meaning multicore should be DLC. I read too much into that.

 

14 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

Yes. I use environmental mods and things like Kerbal Engineer, but I am 100% stock on parts for the same reason.

Exactly. I use gameplay enhancement mods, like EVE, scatterer, and KER, KAC, but try to keep the amount of parts mods low. A few exceptions are KIS/KAS, as they include significant gameplay enhancements.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Phoenix84

[Snark]

5 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

The Infernal Robotics-esque features are awesome. I like them. I like the thought of them, the implementation to some extent, and the idea behind them and their uses. However, the actual mod "Infernal Robotics" already does exactly this, and although there haven't really been any other screenshots except hinges, I imagine I.R. does more than what Squad intends to add. Each to their own in terms of how detailed you would expect to see something like I.R. be implemented.

Yes, but if you use the argument "it's worthless because a mod already does it", then practically everything is worthless, because everything's been done in a mod before.  Because they took the trouble to make the game so moddable.

Don't get me wrong, I love mods.  I run several of them that I pretty much refuse to play KSP without, at this point.  I've written a bunch of them, mainly to make the game do things that I want it to do, when there wasn't already a mod that did what I want.  So I'm 100% behind the whole "mods are great" thing.

However, I would contend that there is value in having a thing officially supported and not just a mod.  Give me two options-- one is a free mod that's a labor of someone's love, and the other is a commercial product that does basically the same thing-- and there are some substantial advantages that the commercial solution has over the mod-based one.  I won't go into that in detail here, since I already have a lengthy rant about it in the Breaking Ground announcement thread.

But what it boils down to is that for me-- speaking as a KSP player, and as a KSP modder, and as a person who ships commercial software for a living... I find value in their producing a thing, even if it's something mods have already done.  (The above-linked rant discusses RemoteTech-versus-stock-CommNet as an example.)

5 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

With that said, I mentioned that the mechanics that are going to be added to the terrain scatters should stay in the DLC, but the models for them should be in the main game. Basically "You can see them and crash into them, but you can get the DLC and interact with them". I genuinely believe the stock planets, especially their surfaces, need the same attention Squad seems to be putting into their part revamps.

That's not a bad idea, I could get behind that.  I think that could be a cool thing for them to do.

I also agree with you that KSP stock planets are incredibly boring and "if you've seen one place, you've seen 'em all".  Not to put too fine a point on it, they're duller than spit.  You'll get no arguments from me, there.

That said, though... I gotta say that whether or not they were to add the models-but-not-the-interactions to the stock game, doesn't really make much difference to me one way or the other.  Because unless I can meaningfully interact with them, then they're just so much eye candy and pretty soon my brain will just learn to un-see them, the same way my brain has learned to un-see all the stock terrain scatters that we've had up to now.

I mean, heck-- there's nothing stopping modders from creating their own custom scatters for stock planets.  I'm sure plenty of people have done so.  But in five years of playing KSP, I've never once been even slightly interested to track down any such mods-- I mean, it's literally not even worth taking a couple of minutes of my time to rummage around to see what's there.  Because for me, terrain scatters that I can't interact with are simply not very interesting.  They make me go "oooh, pretty" for maybe an hour or two of gameplay, then my brain edits them out and they're just part of the background noise.

For me, making them interactable is what it would take to make them interesting.  So that interactivity is pretty much the whole thing, as far as I'm concerned.  Given that they're not adding the functionality to the base game, then for me, adding the models would just be fairly low-value clutter.

4 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

And I have grounds to say this because I do not charge for my mods. Nobody on this site does. We mod not only because we enjoy it to bits, but because we see the flaws in the stock game and want to build / improve upon them.

Exactly!  Very well put.  That's the same reason that I mod the game, too.  Partly because I want to fill in the "holes" that I perceive in the game, partly out of a desire to help other folks.  So I think you and I are pretty much on the same page when it comes to "why we mod".

But I gotta take issue with trying to use that to justify this statement,

4 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

What Squad's doing is in essence us charging for our planet mods.

Huh?  No it isn't.  It's them charging for their stuff.  A completely different proposition.

When a user gets your mod, or my mod, or any other modder's mod, consider what they're not getting:

• They're getting no guarantee that it works as advertised.
• They're getting no promise that it will be maintained for all future versions of KSP.
• They're getting no promise that it will work with all the various DLC packs that Squad may come out with.
• They're getting no promise that the modder won't suddenly vanish and stop updating.
• They're getting no promise of customer support.
• They're getting no guarantee of a large and varied user base of many thousands of people all using the same product, so that knowledge can be shared, etc.

You and I and all the other modders do what we do for free... and in exchange for that, we don't owe anybody anything.  If I had to drop all my mods tomorrow due to some change of life circumstances (which, I hasten to add lest my users worry, I do not anticipate happening!), I could do so with a completely clear conscience and nobody would have the right to say boo about it.

And it also means that we're not giving anything up by modding.  We're doing it for fun.  It's a hobby.

That's not the case for Squad.  They have to pay their developers, who need to buy groceries, pay the rent, etc., same as anyone else.  It costs me zero to develop my mods, so I can afford to give them away for free.  It costs Squad tons of money to develop their software, same as anyone else, because it's a commercial product and commercial products are not the same as mods.  They just aren't.  So of course they gotta charge money, just to recoup their costs, let alone make a profit (which after all is the entire point of the enterprise).

There are a bunch of mods I like to use.  If the owners tried to charge me $15 for them, I'd probably stop using them and write my own, because I'm not going to pay for something that doesn't have reasonable corporate guarantees behind it.  But I'll happily spend $15 on a DLC from Squad, because that is an officially supported thing, now and in the future for as long as they're actively developing KSP.  It's giving me something that a mod doesn't, which is why I'm willing to pay for it.

4 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Tl;dr - People can spend their money on what they like where they see fit, but because I am an academic with next to no money, no job, etc, I care a lot about the stuff I spend it on. This DLC is nothing more than a timesaver. I might as well install the mods myself for a better experience now.

And that's totally cool.  Different people like different things, and also have very different life circumstances, etc.  Nothing's going to work for everyone.

If what Squad is producing in this DLC doesn't suit your needs and doesn't seem to offer sufficient value to you to be worth forking over $15, then of course you shouldn't buy it.

It's like anything else:  people are gonna vote with their wallets.  Judging from most of the reactions I've seen over in the announcement thread, my impression is that a large majority of KSP users (well, at least, a large percentage of vocal forum users, which is not the same thing, but it's the only data I've got) seem to be in the willing-to-spend-$15 camp.

58 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

So, in a sense, I feel like Squad reskinned the parts for the sake of it. Whether it's because they didn't like the look of them or needed something flashy to get more sales, we'll never know

Well, no commercial company ever does anything "just for the sake of it" unless they're stupid, and I see no evidence of Squad or Take Two being stupid, so this seems unlikely to me, to put it mildly.

(If you're a for-profit enterprise, you don't do things "just for the sake of it" because doing anything costs a lot of money, and if the sole reason you even exist is to turn a profit, you're not going to spend money on something that doesn't produce a return.  You just don't.)

As to why they did those things?  I don't work for Squad and therefore am not any more privy to their internal business decisions than you are, but I have been in the software biz for a few decades, so I know what I'd guess:  At some point they made the inevitable decision to go down the DLC path.  (I say "inevitable" because there are only so many copies of the stock game that they can sell, and once that well has run dry, it's either start selling DLC or else close up shop and move on to some other product.)  But a DLC is a big-ticket item that takes a long time to produce-- say, a year.  So they need to come up with something to keep up interest among the player base, so they don't get bored and wander away.  Doesn't need to be spectacular, just something shiny enough to keep people engaged long enough until the next DLC comes out.

I could be wrong, of course-- the preceding paragraph is pure speculation on my part.  But it's what I'd guess, based on my experience in the business.

58 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

this IS Take Two we're taking about, and they are not unknown for caring less about the consumer and more about the sales.

Huh?  I'm sorry, I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance here-- I've worked for a lot of software companies in my time, and one thing I can say is that it's extraordinarily rare for any company to care at all about the consumer per se.  All they care about is sales, when it comes down to it.  That's what a for-profit corporation is for.  Money is the sole point.  That's the only reason anyone shows up to work.

Now, that said-- there are different strategies to go about making money, and those strategies are necessarily different according to circumstances.  There are companies that are renowned for customer service and customer satisfaction-- like Amazon-- and then there are companies that are universally loathed by their customers for truly appalling customer relations-- like the big cable companies in the US, for example.  But that doesn't mean that Amazon "cares" more about their customers, or that Comcast "cares" less.  They're both simply out to make money; no more, no less.  Amazon provides excellent customer service-- at considerable monetary cost to themselves, I might add-- simply because the nature of their business model is such that they know that all their competitors are just one mouse-click away, so they'd darn well better make the customer super happy or they'll go elsewhere.  Whereas a company like Comcast, which is generally a local monopoly and their victims-- sorry, "customers"-- are absolutely helpless and can't turn elsewhere, so they treat them like dirt because there's no financial reason not to, and being nice to customers costs money.

What I'm getting at is... please don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing corporations, or attaching sentimental value to them.  They simply are what they are, and they exist solely to make money.  The ones that have a reputation for "closeness to the community" do so for financial reasons, too-- i.e. they're making a point of cultivating good relations because they want to get repeat business and know that people will take their dollars elsewhere if they're unhappy.

KSP is a very moddable game, and I see no reason to expect that to change any time soon.  If the powers-that-be really didn't care about customer goodwill, what they'd do would be to lock down KSP so that you'd be forced to buy their DLC if you wanted shiny toys, in order to prevent modders from competing with them by providing similar services for free.

But they haven't done that.  And I see no signs that they plan to do it, either.  Quite the contrary-- they've gone to great lengths to make the game moddable, and that applies to the features they've been adding recently, too, after the Take Two acquisition.

So we get the best of both.  There's DLC for purchase, which anyone who wants to can buy-- and there's a super open, super moddable free platform that's very welcoming to modders, so that anyone who doesn't want to spend the money on a DLC can just find some mod that does what they want, or even make one themselves.

Seems to me that that's the best of all possible worlds.  What's not to like?

58 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

I don't understand why I'd pay for this DLC if I could just spend a little longer to install the few mods.

So don't, then.  If you think it's "meh", don't get it.  The people who do want it, will get it.  Everyone wins, yes?

58 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

If Squad was still an indie developer and not governed by a money hungry company such as Take Two...

Again:  Every commercial company is money hungry.  Seriously, don't try to personalize it, it's not worth it.  I happen to like KSP and the community here and the way Squad relates to the customer base, which is why I'm happy to continue giving them my money.  But they did things that way because they found a way to make money by doing so.  When Take Two bought KSP, they bought something that was already a going concern and already had an established customer base with certain expectations.  Alienating the customer base is a good way to lose money.  Is there reason to think that T2 isn't going to be able to tell which side their bread is buttered on, here?

58 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

They're so out of touch which the community they're adding things mods already add and not innovating and adding something mods can't add. This is where I mentioned multicore support but didn't mean to imply making it a dlc, it would be a more valuable use of time than the part reskins.

If you define "things mods already add" as being useless to add, you've just taken practically everything off the table.

And I think "multicore support" would be a really bad idea for a DLC, for a variety of reasons:  specifically, 1. of highly dubious commercial value (I think the ROI would suck), and 2. if they tried to make that something that they charge for instead of giving it to everyone in the base game, the customer base would erupt in fury and hatred (and I expect I'd be among them).

[ZooNamedGames]

I know there are already several threads already on this topic of people sharing their opinions about the latest DLC, and well... if I didn't procrastinate making this post, I wouldn't be so late to the party about this. Thankfully the extra time has allowed me to review my thoughts and make my comments on the DLC more concise and to the point (hopefully). 

 

Breaking Ground, a DLC that has promised new EVA suits, more EVA activities such as examining and collecting terrain scattered objects and deploying science modules, and robotic parts. I'll just get it out of the way and it say it now to save time- all of these things can and have been done by mods. EVA suits through TextureReplacer; RoverScience (or whatever it's called) has you collect and perform science with specific locations and there was a mod that allowed you to deploy remote science modules, and the robotic parts is far from new having been available since alpha (pre 0.25). That said- it's great that Squad is picking the robotics mod, as it's been long requested and mod developers (though I appreciate your work greatly) could never keep the mod stable for long. Now that Squad has adopted it, it should hopefully be more stable and less buggy.

That said- what do I think of the DLC? Is it good or bad? Well I say that it's a neat offer but I don't want future DLCs to be like this. Just having us cough up cash for mods. (But Zoo, Squad needs money to make content!- and to that I say the following-). DLCs should aim to offer something that mods have not done or is not capable of doing. A great example was the Mission Maker from Making History. That is something completely original and not performed by mods. But Zoo, mods have already done so much, there isn't much for Squad to do that isn't already a mod- well that just silly. There's plenty of concepts and ideas that leave Squad room to tinker and grow without having to copy. Custom engine creator, planet creator, fuel tank painter, space suit designer, etc. There's certainly things Squad could do that wouldn't have to involve adopting existing mods. Personally I'm also not a fan of this as it's just replacing new content. Squad has just been padding new updates with mod content and new textures. There's occasionally something new in there (idle animations, maneuver node editor, etc). I'm not expecting massive amounts of new content, but I side with the part of the community that thinks that fixes and improvements should take priority for a while. Fixing career and implementing optimization changes. 

I also dislike their choice of additions to the game- while those who can't afford the DLC are kept out from content that ultimately could aid the very weak career mode. If Squad promised to release some new content for career or some sort of upgrade/improvement, then I'd say it's fair game but this isn't the case (that I'm aware of). Squad has locked "full career" behind a secondary paywall. Not to mention that they're just monetizing previously free content.

To reiterate though- I know Squad needs to make money and to do so they're making new DLCs to fund KSP development. I'm ok with DLCs as I understand that Squad can't run off of hopes and dreams. So I'm supporting having new DLCs, I just think that this particular one goes about it poorly or doesn't offer enough to warrant the cash investment. There's nothing new in this mod pack beyond the content now being fully supported and now maintained by the game developers so it'll be stable from now on. I wouldn't mind if these mod inclusions to the DLC were bundled with something fresh and original since there's plenty of options they could factor in. But instead it's entirely old content rehashed until a new label for cash.

 

That said, I've already spent 6+ years on this game. I'm too deep to escape it so I probably will eventually end up buying this DLC regardless. But I hope my opinion is at least heard by others considering whether or not to buy it. 

 

Thanks for coming to my TED talk rant. Have a nice day. 

[klesh]

5 hours ago, Snark said:

Any chance of getting an executive summary, so we can get the gist without wading through a ten-minute video?

This made me chuckle a little, coming from a guy who's posts ought to come with cliff notes. 

 

 

4 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

There are several computer games out there, such as Cities: Skylines, which has added new features to the game about once a year. Those "new features" also run about $15.00 a pop. So having to pay $15.00 for new features for Kerbal Space Program certainly is not a dealbreaker. 

Until you get to a point, like Skylines, where you have a game being sold for $29.99 with, no exaggeration, $150.84 worth of DLC.  https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/Cities_Skylines/

And yet, that company has been putting out an entire series of community videos, showing how great the game can be, if only you used 8 different mods to achieve this or that look that the game still doesn't have baked into it.  Scroll down and check that out:  https://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=255710

They've turned it into a $180 game that still needs mods to be awesome.  I'd want to see development halted and KSP 2 before KSP1 turns into a DLC moneyprinter.

 

 

2 hours ago, Snark said:

In the same sense that a restaurant puts food behind a paywall?  It's the product they're selling, so they charge money for it.

 

No.  Probably in the same sense you go to a bar and get free peanuts, or crackers, or popcorn to get you to spend more money on drinks.

 

 

1 hour ago, Gameslinx said:

I kind of feel as if Squad has lost or is losing the connection to the community. From what I see, nobody was asking for part reskins.

 

Tons of people were calling for the "placeholder parts" to be replaced!  In fact, there was an entire debate as to whether the 5+ year old, very ugly version of parts should be considered placeholder or not. It got heated!

That being said, I noticed how we haven't seen a KSP Loading preview of new parts since ReStock came out and people seem to feel it is miles beyond what Squad was doing with its revamps.  Maybe they're done doing them, who knows.  There is still a bunch of very not-snazzy looking parts in the game.

 

 

 

 

 

Let's face it, Squad sold the franchise to Take Two Interactive, and that company is not in the business of providing eternally free updates.  Read up on their CEO Strauss Zelnick sometime, he's a real doozie about recurrent spending and monetizing their playerbase.

KSP has been out for so long that pretty much everything you can think of in terms of new content has been previously created by a mod.  At some point they're going to cross into "this was already done by mods" territory.

As I see it, this DLC is at least something many players will be able to enjoy, rather than the terrible Mission Builder in Making History that no one asked for and like 6 people use.   That entire DLC was a $15 parks pack for 95% of the community.  This new DLC looks like it will have at least more universal appeal, and be a better value for folks.

 

Theres alot being said in this thread and I didnt have the time to put together full replies to everything in here.  Hope you enjoyed a greatest hits skim over.

[MechBFP]

6 minutes ago, klesh said:

No.  Probably in the same sense you go to a bar and get free peanuts, or crackers, or popcorn to get you to spend more money on drinks.

That’s a bad example because in a lot of places that is actually a legal requirement saying they have to serve food with alchohol. 

[klesh]

4 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

That’s a bad example because in a lot of places that is actually a legal requirement saying they have to serve food with alchohol. 

 

Lol.  C'mon now.  That is definitely not the reason salty snacks are provided at nearly every bar you can find.  Sure, it might be at some place that doesn't serve food, but when was the last time you were at a bar that had no menu?  The vast, and I mean vast majority is to make you parched. to whet your appetite as it were.

Here's 32 more examples of the concept of the "free sample" and its effect on the consumer: https://www.frugalforless.com/32-free-product-samples-straight-from-the-manufacturer/

Those companies are not providing that out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because it helps sell.

 

[Superfluous J]

29 minutes ago, klesh said:

Probably in the same sense you go to a bar and get free peanuts, or crackers, or popcorn to get you to spend more money on drinks.

Like, say, a free 1.8 update to go along with it? Or the free dV numbers, UI changes, maneuver node editor, and part graphics?

[klesh]

8 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Like, say, a free 1.8 update to go along with it? Or the free dV numbers, UI changes, maneuver node editor, and part graphics?

 

No.  Those were not samples or teasers leading you towards a purchase, those were just free updates.  I'm replying to snark who seems to feel things should be dlc only, with no taste teasers in regular updates.

 

A different example might be to have allowed the Squad MH missions to be playable by anyone, but requiring MH in order to create, or play community-created missions.

Edited May 7, 2019 by klesh

[linuxgurugamer]

Something not addressed in this conversation is, who is the intended audience of the DLC?  

Obviously many people on the forum use mods, and in many cases, mods fulfill a person's needs.  But I would wager that probably 75%-90% of the customers have never installed a mod, for any number of reasons, but probably because they just want to enjoy the game. 

I've also heard the number of more than 1 million sales.

Using these assumptions, lets also assume that only a quarter of them will purchase the DLSC.  A  guesstimate of potential customers of this would be  something like this:   1,000,000 * 75% *25% * $15 = $2,812,500.  Peanuts to a company like Take-2, but enough to justify further development.  And I tried to be very conservative in my guesses , so if instead of a quarter purchasing, it's half, that would double the potential revenue.  

Being a mod author as well as a mod maintainer, I've had the experience of having a mod that I wrote and spent a lot of time one, get deprecated (PDPN) by a new stock feature.  I cheered, because that is something l don't need to support anymore. Another mod I support, TakeCommand, was also made stock, and again, I cheered.

When you look at the total number of modders, the number has decreased quite drastically over the years.  I wish it were not so, but that's life.  And expecting new modders to come along is not realistic.  There have been a few new modders, and a lot of retired modders.

So, if the DLC isn't worth it to someone, they don't have to pay and can continue to use mods.  It's their choice.  In the end the marketplace will level things out.

[Jestersage]

21 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Something not addressed in this conversation is, who is the intended audience of the DLC?  

Obviously many people on the forum use mods, and in many cases, mods fulfill a person's needs.  But I would wager that probably 75%-90% of the customers have never installed a mod, for any number of reasons, but probably because they just want to enjoy the game. 

I've also heard the number of more than 1 million sales.

Using these assumptions, lets also assume that only a quarter of them will purchase the DLSC.  A  guesstimate of potential customers of this would be  something like this:   1,000,000 * 75% *25% * $15 = $2,812,500.  Peanuts to a company like Take-2, but enough to justify further development.  And I tried to be very conservative in my guesses , so if instead of a quarter purchasing, it's half, that would double the potential revenue.  

Being a mod author as well as a mod maintainer, I've had the experience of having a mod that I wrote and spent a lot of time one, get deprecated (PDPN) by a new stock feature.  I cheered, because that is something l don't need to support anymore. Another mod I support, TakeCommand, was also made stock, and again, I cheered.

When you look at the total number of modders, the number has decreased quite drastically over the years.  I wish it were not so, but that's life.  And expecting new modders to come along is not realistic.  There have been a few new modders, and a lot of retired modders.

 So, if the DLC isn't worth it to someone, they don't have to pay and can continue to use mods.  It's their choice.  In the end the marketplace will level things out.

This. And as someone relatively new (that is, after the free-DLC period), I sometimes feel the community that "unless you play a game with mods, you are a noob", and don't get us start on Steam. Instead of making the game fun for new comers, it feel daunting, unwelcoming

Take challenges: how many stated "mods welcome but not DLC", when many of the steam users find getting DLC easier?

Look at steam discussion. They cheered for DLC.

In short, the community is actually past "going to be fragmented". We are fragmented. All we can do is that we will accept people may duplicate functions and challenges and community practice of what is created previously.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Jestersage

[Klapaucius]

8 minutes ago, Jestersage said:

Look at steam discussion. They cheered for DLC.

I as well came to KSP just as the Making History Expansion came out. I do not understand the hatred thrown at it. It was a brilliant idea, and it almost seems like a lot of the community just folded their arms, harrumphed and decided they were going to have nothing to do with it without trying.  To be fair, I don't build missions, but I do use it a lot for moving around the solar system or just giving myself a way to play around in orbit or on different celestial bodies without having to mount a massive mission. When you only have a few hours here and there, you cannot always go for major missions.  It works with Planet Packs as well, so I can plop my plane down on Dreidos and go for a fly, or do loops in the thick atmosphere of Tellumo.  It is also a great way to practice certain skills in isolation and test prototypes.

Yes there were hyperedit mods, but frankly, Making History does it so much better. 

 

I do agree with @klesh that it would be nice to be able to create missions that non-DLC folks can play, even if only DLC purchasers can create them.  Any rally or race challenge would be a lot easier to set up in Making History, where you could easily plant route markers and flags.  Ironically, I think if the developers did this, it would get used more and the non DLC folks who played these missions might be more inclined to make the purchase themselves down the line.

[Snark]

34 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

I do agree with @klesh that it would be nice to be able to create missions that non-DLC folks can play, even if only DLC purchasers can create them.

But wouldn't that remove a reason for people to buy MH?

I mean, if the goal of shipping a DLC is to make money-- which it is-- then it's pretty important not to shoot yourself in the foot by letting people get the cool stuff you're adding without having to pay the money.

Having missions is a pretty important piece of Making History.  My guess is that it has the usual extremely lopsided ratio between content creators and content consumers:  i.e. there are a whole lot more people who watch YouTube than have their own channels, there are a whole lot more mod users than mod authors, and there are (I'm guessing) a whole lot more people inclined to use missions than there are people inclined to create them.  If you let people use the missions for free, you may be eliminating a large swath of the target market for Making History.

It's not a no-brainer.  It's a reasonable suggestion, and whether or not it would be a good one for the company to follow would really depend on how the dynamics of their target demographic work out.  But my gut (which could, of course, be wrong) tells me that letting players play missions without buying Making History would lower sales of the DLC, not raise it.  And would therefore be a bad idea from the publisher's point of view.

[Klapaucius]

@Snark Good points. i'm not sure which way would work, but either way I think Making History has been very unfairly maligned.  As mentioned above, the ability to move around the solar system so easily was alone worth the price of admission for me.  That does not mean I won't mount a big mission. Teleporting to Laythe versus actually getting there are too different things and scratch two different itches.  It is nice to have both options.

It is also so much easier to build and test submarines, for example, when you don't spend the first several minutes just trying to get them into the water.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Klapaucius

[Jestersage]

37 minutes ago, Snark said:

But wouldn't that remove a reason for people to buy MH?

I mean, if the goal of shipping a DLC is to make money-- which it is-- then it's pretty important not to shoot yourself in the foot by letting people get the cool stuff you're adding without having to pay the money.

Having missions is a pretty important piece of Making History.  My guess is that it has the usual extremely lopsided ratio between content creators and content consumers:  i.e. there are a whole lot more people who watch YouTube than have their own channels, there are a whole lot more mod users than mod authors, and there are (I'm guessing) a whole lot more people inclined to use missions than there are people inclined to create them.  If you let people use the missions for free, you may be eliminating a large swath of the target market for Making History.

It's not a no-brainer.  It's a reasonable suggestion, and whether or not it would be a good one for the company to follow would really depend on how the dynamics of their target demographic work out.  But my gut (which could, of course, be wrong) tells me that letting players play missions without buying Making History would lower sales of the DLC, not raise it.  And would therefore be a bad idea from the publisher's point of view.

Not necessary depend on execution. Payday 2's model is perfect example: You can play the DLC missions, provide someone host it. And some achievement can only be done with DLC (due to mask) And some of the weapons and perk deck provided the advantages such that you eventually shelled out of DLC . Granted, even when new, each DLC is only $5... except if have a lot of DLC.

[Vanamonde]

Several overlapping threads have been merged into this master discussion. 

[micha]

11 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

that comes out to $0.0118 for each minute hour of gameplay. And typically, I play for about two hours at a time, bring the amount of money spent per game session to about $1.42 $0.023.

Fixed.
Gaming really is pretty damn cheap entertainment these days. Even if you factor in the cost of your computer (let's say 1000USD for a basic gaming rig) you're still only at $0.30 per hour (in your case). And in general you really don't have to sink all that many hours into a game in order to start comparing favourably with other forms of entertainment.

@Gameslinx: I'm afraid I also have to disagree with your point. Firstly we don't know precisely what bits of this DLC will be part of the base game and what will be in the DLC only (for example, Kerbal Inventories will be part of the base game...) and secondly, as already mentioned numerous times, KSP is a commercial product, not a charity.  It's nobodies fault that your chosen career results in minimal income, but that won't turn the rest of the world into your charity; they need to eat too.

As for "complete", the game is (was?) primarily about building and launching rockets. Having destinations, landing, and exploration came later. One can argue about the current depth of those experiences and how they could be improved and prettified but that was not the original focus. Everybody will have their own definition of what features are "required" in order to "complete" the game, but legally, the game was "complete" with v1.0.  The fact it's still being developed with features added (many free) instead of in maintenance mode with only critical bug fixes coming out speaks volumes about the deverlopers' integrity.

[Gameslinx]

7 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

DLCs should aim to offer something that mods have not done or is not capable of doing. A great example was the Mission Maker from Making History. That is something completely original and not performed by mods.

Definitely agree with this. And @micha I understand Squad isn't a charity but this DLC sure makes it seem like it. Because mods do everything (that we know) will be in the DLC, the only reason to really buy it is to support the devs. Yeah sure, mods take a bit of time to update after an update but at the current pace nothing is actually being added of much value in my opinion. It's just been mod-merging since 1.3.

Whilst i appreciate the effort Squad's going to to make the game more enjoyable, it's a waste of time because anyone who uses Restock, KIS, a planet mod or a science mod will immediately undo all that work they spent reskinning the parts or making the DLC.

We don't know the extent of what's going to be added, but sadly I can't give them the benefit of the doubt as much as I would have been before MH because MH was rather disappointing and a lot of people feel the same way about it as I do.

So the conclusion to this whole thing is,  you can buy the DLC if you want to support the devs and maybe save some time, but if you're unsure or simply don't have the money you're not missing out on anything at all (it'll just take a few extra minutes to fire up CKAN)

[micha]

5 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

So the conclusion to this whole thing is,  you can buy the DLC if you want to support the devs and maybe save some time, but if you're unsure or simply don't have the money you're not missing out on anything at all (it'll just take a few extra minutes to fire up CKAN)

Given that's your take on this, why make such a big case about it? People will either buy it or they won't, and depending on how many people do either will give Squad an indication as to whether it was a waste of their time or not.

Personally I'll definitely buy it if only to ensure the game keeps getting updates, including the free ones which benefit everybody.

And for people who can't or won't buy it, it seems that at least part of the update is available in the form of mods.

[Xurkitree]

Can we have an F for all the chats that got merged into this.

Thanks.

[RealKerbal3x]

@Gameslinx Sure, most of the content in this new DLC is already available in one form or another in mods. But echoing what others have posted previously, I'll always prefer a stock solution over one from a mod, even if the content from the mod is better than stock, because I'm guaranteed continued support from SQUAD - with a mod I have no such guarantee and the modder can abandon the mod any time they want. This is one of the reasons I don't use ReStock - sure, the stuff it does is nice, but I'm not promised indefinite support like I am from the stock revamps (which is another reason I don't use RS...I actually like the stock revamps...I know, crazy, but I do).

8 hours ago, klesh said:

That being said, I noticed how we haven't seen a KSP Loading preview of new parts since ReStock came out and people seem to feel it is miles beyond what Squad was doing with its revamps.  Maybe they're done doing them, who knows.  There is still a bunch of very not-snazzy looking parts in the game.

I don't think SQUAD would abandon the revamp effort they're doing, just because a mod came out that does the same thing (and apparently better, as the community's reactions have shown). Remember, SQUAD has to cater for a significant portion of their fanbase who can't or won't use mods (and whose game would be left even more mismatched than it would be without the stock revamp). As @Maxsimal said in the announcement thread, the game can't depend on a user-created mod for a variety of reasons.

[cfds]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Something not addressed in this conversation is, who is the intended audience of the DLC?

The intended audience is the Steam homepage. You do not earn the money by selling a DLC to the existing players, you make the money by getting your game (with a nice discount) on the Steam start page and have people buy the game and then not play it...

[VoidCosmos]

15 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Hey all!

I want to discuss the DLC and why I don't necessarily think it's a good idea. I have spent the time to record a video and verbally explain the good and the bad about this update, as well as discussing a bit about Squad's update history. I hope you are able to agree with what I'm trying to say in this video. I'm not particularly good at this format since I have never really done it before, so I hope I don't ramble too much.

The points I will cover in more detail if you choose to watch the video include the following:

• Squad's update history and why the part reskins haven't been a good use of their time considering mods do the same and in the case of Restock, a better job (which IS subjective!)
• Overview of what the DLC aims to add
• Explanation of the planet surface features and why I don't like the implementation of the DLC the way it has been done.

I did forget to cover a few points / not go into enough detail about the points in the video, so I will do here:

Firstly I want to stress that i like what Squad is doing, but their execution is what I have a problem with. In short, I don't think the DLC is worth the price from what we've been told about it. Obviously, this is subject to what you as a consumer want to actually pay for the DLC, which is why I explain it a bit better in the video.

The Infernal Robotics-esque features are awesome. I like them. I like the thought of them, the implementation to some extent, and the idea behind them and their uses. However, the actual mod "Infernal Robotics" already does exactly this, and although there haven't really been any other screenshots except hinges, I imagine I.R. does more than what Squad intends to add. Each to their own in terms of how detailed you would expect to see something like I.R. be implemented.

My main gripe is the planetary surfaces.

The stock planets are awful in my opinion. I do have very strong feelings about them because I myself am a planet modder, but I will try not to include my work here because it's not a good idea to include myself when the subject is criticism of someone else's work. What the DLC intends to add are "terrain scatters" - essentially the proper name for what Squad is calling rocks, trees, cacti, crystals, meteorites, etc. These can all be added to the game with a mod, for free, and planet mods such as Galileo's Planet Pack already do this. Stock Visual Terrain, although as far as I'm aware doesn't add these scatters, improves the planets' terrain textures instead. This is all easily achievable for free and without much effort. My main critique in this video is that the entire terrain scatters are part of this DLC. The planets are bare and boring and barren and appear unfinished. This is why I suggested making them part of the stock game rather than locking them behind a DLC. The stock planets aren't even finished, never mind the DLC!

With that said, I mentioned that the mechanics that are going to be added to the terrain scatters should stay in the DLC, but the models for them should be in the main game. Basically "You can see them and crash into them, but you can get the DLC and interact with them". I genuinely believe the stock planets, especially their surfaces, need the same attention Squad seems to be putting into their part revamps.

Now, that will sound contradictory and in a way it is - saying Squad should stop the part revamps because a mod can do it, then saying they should do the same for the planets? Yes, in a way. Except the parts didn't need the revamp so much. The planets, however, are a key part of the exploration aspect of the game and there's nothing worse than exploring nothing at all. Since Squad has already gone ahead and redone the parts, that's why I'm saying the planets need the attention too - but they're in such a bad state, making the improvements to them a DLC is a joke.

Conclusion:

I like what Squad's doing, but their execution of it is bad. There was little need for this DLC since 95% of it is done through mods anyway - the only real addition we haven't seen before is the gameplay surrounding the rocks they're planning to add to the planets. Which will be pressing a button and seeing our science rise, give or take a couple of parts to achieve this. Do I think it's worth the price? No.

If I don't like it, I won't buy it - that's the motto people chant for these kinds of threads, and that's it really. I won't buy it, because it isn't worth buying imho. It comes down to you whether to support the developers by buying it or not, but since 95% of it can be done through mods, i'll stick to my mods, thank you.

Ultimate TL:DR:

Squad is re-inventing the wheel by adding things mods already add. They need to focus their time on things mods don't add - such as multi-core support, optimization, making the terrain scatters they so dearly want to charge for use GPU instancing instead of the inefficient way they currently use by loading every single one into RAM.

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Please let me know if you agree or disagree, as i have quite strong feelings about this DLC and honestly do not think it's worth the $15 tag from what we have been told. Granted it might be better to wait until it's released, but for now I made do with what knowledge we have so far.

Thank you for taking the time to read and watch.

@Gameslinx It's not worth $15. Either Squad has to add more features or decrease the price of it.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Nigel Cardozo