Kerbal Space Program 2: Master Post

[Lisias]

6 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Feel free to waste your money. I’m sure some ambulance chaser somewhere would be more than happy to assist lol. 

Some of these ambulance chasers eventually hit the jackpot.

https://www.nme.com/en_asia/news/gaming-news/cyberpunk-2077-cd-projekt-red-founders-loss-2841730

Spoiler

Keep in your mind that the real objective of these stunts is not to earn money, but to undermine the company and try a hostile takeover later.

What, look, it also happened to CD Projekt Red in the past.

https://www.eteknix.com/cd-projekt-red-clarifies-hostile-takeover-rumors/

Life is way more complicated than you think - and way bigger than you.

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon.

[dprostock]

8 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Feel free to waste your money. I’m sure some ambulance chaser somewhere would be more than happy to assist lol. 

I wouldn't go for the money, but because the list of developers is made public so the rest of them know what to stick to.
It hurts to have participated in a fiasco, doesn't it?

[MechBFP]

1 minute ago, dprostock said:

I wouldn't go for the money, but because the list of developers is made public so the rest of them know what to stick to.
It hurts to have participated in a fiasco, doesn't it?

What?

[Kerbart]

3 hours ago, dprostock said:

So you know it's mediocre but with a change in paint color every three months you justify the income and that's enough?

I do not “know” the product is mediocre. I wouldn’t spend thousands of hours playing the game if I thought it was mediocre.

 

there's a lot more I'd like to answer to that post but it's derailing the thread already as it is.

[dprostock]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

I do not “know” the product is mediocre. I wouldn’t spend thousands of hours playing the game if I thought it was mediocre.

 

"No bugs fixed since version 1.0"
"The new team cannot take over the desguising carried out by the previous team"

Sorry,  it wasn't my words.

It may be thought that someone is carrying all of it to try to create the KSP2.

 

[MechBFP]

10 hours ago, dprostock said:

"No bugs fixed since version 1.0"
"The new team cannot take over the desguising carried out by the previous team"

Sorry,  it wasn't my words.

It may be thought that someone is carrying all of it to try to create the KSP2.

 

Who are you quoting? Your posts are literally not making any sense to me. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by MechBFP
typo

[HebaruSan]

7 hours ago, dprostock said:

When I purchased the product I have not read anywhere that there were warnings that since 1.0 no errors are fixed.

3 hours ago, dprostock said:

"No bugs fixed since version 1.0"

What does this refer to? Every update announcement contains a list of bugs fixed in that version.

[AmateurAstronaut1969]

What scale will KSP 2 be in? 1x like the current stock scale, or something more realistic like 2.5x?

[RealKerbal3x]

9 minutes ago, AmateurAstronaut1969 said:

What scale will KSP 2 be in? 1x like the current stock scale, or something more realistic like 2.5x?

It'll stay in the current stock scale.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, dprostock said:

"No bugs fixed since version 1.0"
"The new team cannot take over the desguising carried out by the previous team"

Extended support, like keeping a game on active development for a decade, needs to be paid somehow, without income nobody will work for free (at least professionally) and no company would keep a product on the market at a loss.

Bugfixes don't generate new income (no shiny new feature to put in the marketing) and, after a decade of patches, fixes and general rummaging with the code the time and money you invest in fixing bugs start bringing diminishing returns.

At this point you pretty much need to rewrite most of the code and to do it you either need a publisher coming in financing it or a crowd funding campain and you need it to be a sequel to avoid breaking that silly "free everything forever" policy that crippled the game for most of its life, which coincidentally is exactly what's happened with Private Division taking over and start working on KSP2.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Extended support, like keeping a game on active development for a decade, needs to be paid somehow, without income nobody will work for free (at least professionally) and no company would keep a product on the market at a loss.

It was my understanding that the DLCs were intended to mitigate this problem.

But 1.11.0 introduced some features (and one of the worst collection of new bugs in KSP's history) that would be better distributed on a new DLC.

So it's my understanding that Squad should have receiving some incentive to doing these shining new features "at loss" - after all, "no company would keep a product on the market at a loss". And then, should be expending some efforts on at least preventing new bugs (specially the obvious ones!).

Or there's something we are missing here?

If there's no money anymore on KSP1, why spending money on developing new features? And if there's still money on it, to the point of giving sellable content for free instead of selling us a DLC, why these features were release on a so horrible collection of new bugs (and I'm not even bothering anymore with the old ones).

TL;DR: Who is paying for this party? They are happy with the music the band is playing?

Edited April 11, 2021 by Lisias
TL;DR

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

It was my understanding that the DLCs were intended to mitigate this problem.

But 1.11.0 introduced some features (and one of the worst collection of new bugs in KSP's history) that would be better distributed on a new DLC.

So it's my understanding that Squad should have receiving some incentive to doing these shining new features "at loss" - after all, "no company would keep a product on the market at a loss". And then, should be expending some efforts on at least preventing new bugs (specially the obvious ones!).

Or there's something we are missing here?

If there's no money anymore on KSP1, why spending money on developing new features? And if there's still money on it, to the point of giving sellable content for free instead of selling us a DLC, why these features were release on a so horrible collection of new bugs (and I'm not even bothering anymore with the old ones).

Mine was an oversimplification, you have to add back in the PR aspect (how they treat KSP1 can change dramatically how people perceive KSP2 when it launches),  the human resources Squad has (you can't just throw more devs at a problem, you have to chose and set priorities, Squad is a small studio after all) the value of the community and the fact that things are rarely as simple as "just not being at loss".

IF KSP generates income in the state it is now it isn't automatic that it's worth to heavily invest in bugfixing, and DLCs are only so effective due to the "everything free forever" policy and slow sales of the base game (to have X feature I have to buy Y DLC on top of the base game).

[Lisias]

6 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Mine was an oversimplification, you have to add back in the PR aspect (how they treat KSP1 can change dramatically how people perceive KSP2 when it launches)

Exactly my point.

I'm way less enthusiastic about KSP2 these days, and I think it's reasonable to assume there're lots of people around on the same page...

Edited April 11, 2021 by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

Exactly my point.

A needed one since people have difficulties understanding that the starting 20$ they put in a EA indie game aren't enough to cover a decade of extended support.

That's the core concept that isn't understood.

[Lisias]

10 minutes ago, Master39 said:

A needed one since people have difficulties understanding that the starting 20$ they put in a EA indie game aren't enough to cover a decade of extended support.

And exactly how pushing terrible, absolutely terrible releases as the recent ones will improve the situation?

 

10 minutes ago, Master39 said:

That's the core concept that isn't understood.

So I think the devs need to get some financial help from Private Division on this matter, because another core concept not being understood is that the current state of affairs is damaging the brand's reputation to a serious level.

We are passing through a peculiar World situation out there (pandemic) where people are spending way too much time inhouse for more than an Year, and so having way more gaming time - and KSP is just throwing all these PR opportunities into the bin, virtually pushing people away from the franchise.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Lisias
Better wordings

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And exactly how pushing terrible, absolutely terrible releases as the recent ones will help the situation?

Releases of what?

Updates? I didn't think the last updates of KSP were bad at all.

Games? Of which market? Indie? Medium ones? AAA?

That's so generalised I can't even understand what you're talking about.

 

8 minutes ago, Lisias said:

So I think the devs need to get some financial help from Private Division on this matter, because another core concept not being understood is that the current state of affairs is damaging the brand's reputation to a serious level.

We are passing through a peculiar World situation out there (pandemic) where people are spending way too much time inhouse for more than an Year, and so having way more gaming time - and KSP is just throwing all these PR opportunities into the bin, virtually pushing people away from the franchise.

Honestly I don't have the sales numbers or the PR data to agree or disagree with your point, just the anecdotal evidence that, in my circles, people are playing and worrying about KSP as much as you do with any other game on which you spent hundreds of hours and you know a sequel is relatively imminent.

Speaking personally I pretty much dropped any plan I had for huge, long campaigns with life support, resources and colonization to focus on more occasional mission dedicated sandbox saves using some of the last vanilla features an update may add.

[MechBFP]

21 minutes ago, Lisias said:

And exactly how pushing terrible, absolutely terrible releases as the recent ones will improve the situation?

 

So I think the devs need to get some financial help from Private Division on this matter, because another core concept not being understood is that the current state of affairs is damaging the brand's reputation to a serious level.

We are passing through a peculiar World situation out there (pandemic) where people are spending way too much time inhouse for more than an Year, and so having way more gaming time - and KSP is just throwing all these PR opportunities into the bin, virtually pushing people away from the franchise.

Pretty sure Squad knows how to run their own business better than what essentially amounts to arm chair analysis of the situation, which means their decisions are based on a reality different from the one you posted. 

[Lisias]

30 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Updates? I didn't think the last updates of KSP were bad at all.

Lots of people disagree with you.

 

21 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Pretty sure Squad knows how to run their own business better than what essentially amounts to arm chair analysis of the situation, which means their decisions are based on a reality different from the one you posted. 

Lots of people disagree with you.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Lots of people disagree with you.

 

Lots of people disagree with you.

In both situations "lot of people" are irrelevant and have partial data if they have any at all.

To summarize it with better words that I could ever hope to put together this forum can be often be summarised with:

Quote

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Master39

[Just a random person]

12 minutes ago, Master39 said:

To summarize it with better words that I could ever hope to put together this forum can be often be summarises with:

Quote

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

This is perfect

[Lisias]

16 minutes ago, Master39 said:

In both situations "lot of people" are irrelevant and have partial data if they have any at all.

Perhaps. But yet, they are there. Let's hope there're not enough to make you wrong.

Faith and Hope.

Not exactly a good business plan - but, well, perhaps I'm irrelevant.

 

17 minutes ago, Master39 said:

To summarize it with better words that I could ever hope to put together this forum can be often be summarised with:

Quote

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

 

And then the Deflectors of Responsibilities were created. The second most ancient profession, I think.  

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Faith and Hope.

Not exactly a good business plan - but, well, perhaps I'm irrelevant.

You're mixing up things, at Squad they don't use faith and hope, they have and use their data, if you're not there you're entitled to an opinion, but it will always be a guess at best.

From a user perspective you can prefer a bugfix run over a new texture for the Xenon tank, but you can only guess costs and the long term effects of prioritizing one over the other.

[Lisias]

7 minutes ago, Master39 said:

You're mixing up things, at Squad they don't use faith and hope, they have and use their data, if you're not there you're entitled to an opinion, but it will always be a guess at best.

My guesses are not the problem. Customer's and Shareholder's guesses are.

You know, someone is paying for the Party - and they want the interests back.

 

12 minutes ago, Master39 said:

From a user perspective you can prefer a bugfix run over a new texture for the Xenon tank, but you can only guess costs and the long term effects of prioritizing one over the other.

It's not what I want, sir. It's what the customers want. Being fair or unfair, there's a contract on this thing - and providing bugged products rarely is a way to fulfil such contracts.

I don't know who is paying for this Party - I'm sure I am not one of them, because the ones paying for the Party are the ones calling the shots.

Obviously, customers like me are not the ones calling the shots around here.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, Lisias said:

My guesses are not the problem. Customer's and Shareholder's guesses are.

You know, someone is paying for the Party - and they want the interests back.

 

It's not what I want, sir. It's what the customers want. Being fair or unfair, there's a contract on this thing - and providing bugged products rarely is a way to fulfil such contracts.

I don't know who is paying for this Party - I'm sure I am not one of them, because the ones paying for the Party are the ones calling the shots.

Obviously, customers like me are not the ones calling the shots around here.

For the nth time: 

KSP is a 10 years old game touched by tens of developers and a lot of them, especially of the very first ones that built the foundation on which the  whole game stands, had no previous experience with game making and became game developers with KSP.

At some point to fix things you need to stop adding new mess and patches to the code and rewrite the whole thing from scratch, implementing all the things you learned along the way not as fixes held together with duct tape but as part of the foundation.

KSP reached that point years ago.

The way out for KSP1 bugginess and bad optimization is KSP2, that's the solution, all they need to do with KSP1 is keeping it afloat at least until KSP2 launches and then discontinue it when it doens't anymore.

At some point you can't just "fix" the underlying hank of spaghetti that keeps everything together, it becomes increasingly costly for ever diminishing returns.

 

And that's just the code/bugs aspect of it, the same goes for the popularity (at some point the success fades and an old beloved game is rarely considered as worth the price as a new one despise costing the same or even more to keep on the market), graphics, gameplay and everything else.

 

 

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

For the nth time:

For the nth² time: this is not customer's problem. I'm sympathise with your problems, but they will not change how customers and shareholders are seeing the product.

Blaming previous developers is easy, by the way - and this just don't change the fact that since then, every single opportunity to prevent things from going trough the tubes was just ignored. 

Your professionalism is measured by what you can deliver with what you have in hands, not by what you could deliver if everything was made right in the past. You accepted the job.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Lisias
Yet more tyops.