KSP2 should have no optional features

[XLjedi]

@Incarnation of Chaos  My expectation is max speed will be achieved at the half-way point between origin and destination.   My first test with the new engine will likely be sandbox unlimited fuel accel into the abyss and see what happens.   Then I'll put 10 engines on there and do it again... 

Then I will start playing the game.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

1 minute ago, XLjedi said:

@Incarnation of Chaos  My expectation is max speed will be achieved at the half-way point between origin and destination.   My first test with the new engine will likely be sandbox unlimited fuel accel into the abyss and see what happens.   Then I'll put 10 engines on there and do it again... 

Then I will start playing the game.

So basically the equivalent of typing "Player.setspeed" in ever increasing multiples of 10 when playing Skyrim? Got it xD

[XLjedi]

[snip]

I do agree that it won't be "MMO" in terms of 1000's orbiting Kerbin at the same time.  I guess I'm more thinking in terms of private or public hosted servers.  In which case I see tighter reins on the modding.  My point was related to MP and how it gets implemented having an impact on modding.  There have been some contradictory statements made by the devs (vs T2 execs), so I'm curious to see how that unfolds.

Maybe MP doesn't even start until you leave the Kerbin SOI?

14 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

So basically the equivalent of typing "Player.setspeed" in ever increasing multiples of 10 when playing Skyrim? Got it xD

If I played Skyrim?  

Edited February 28, 2020 by Vanamonde

[Terwin]

I expect that PD will insist that all of the 'low barrier to entry' options are available(and probably default, at least in easy mode), so the only way for the devs to keep to their stated intent(not dumb-down KSP2) is to make them switchable.

If you want to claim that T2I will not demand 'widest possible audience' type requirements, then try to convince me that the people responsible for micro-transactions in GTA(and many many other games) are not all about profits. 

I am hoping for switches for things such as Comnet, Reentry heating, Gravity tolerance, and ship-board life support, as I do not expect that they will be available at all if not optional.

[MechBFP]

21 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I expect that PD will insist that all of the 'low barrier to entry' options are available(and probably default, at least in easy mode), so the only way for the devs to keep to their stated intent(not dumb-down KSP2) is to make them switchable.

If you want to claim that T2I will not demand 'widest possible audience' type requirements, then try to convince me that the people responsible for micro-transactions in GTA(and many many other games) are not all about profits. 

I am hoping for switches for things such as Comnet, Reentry heating, Gravity tolerance, and ship-board life support, as I do not expect that they will be available at all if not optional.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Although I do agree that limiting options can improve the overall game, am I also well aware of the realities of game development. Just because something is a good idea, doesn’t mean it’s a realistic idea. 

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I am hoping for switches for things such as Comnet, Reentry heating, Gravity tolerance, and ship-board life support, as I do not expect that they will be available at all if not optional.

I can't say much about LS as we have no idea how it's going to be implemented, but I do disagree with you about the rest of it.

CommNet doesn't make the early game more difficult at all. Neither does re-entry heating nor G-limits. Newbies don't burn up in the atmosphere, they make a crater because they come in too steep. Newbies also don't fly probes, they fly kerbals.

CommNet only introduces complications after you've figured out how to make orbit. Re-entry heating only introduces complications when re-entering straight from Munar orbit or faster. By the time you get to that point, you're more than capable enough to figure them out -- getting there in the first place will have been much harder.

[sturmhauke]

9 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Even if the majority votes YES on options, I am still right about this -- it's not something that ought to be subject to a vote.

If you insist that you are right and will not change your mind no matter what, there is no discussion to be had here.

[Arco123]

Ima chime in here. If this makes any sense. I don't know but here it goes. This is PC vs Mac. Without any of the cost and speed stuff. The PC has many options for many people. If you could only pick the top 3 prebuilts without anything else then it makes no sense. With Mac you can only choose a few models and not have much or any custom stuff. If the options were arranged well and (Maybe) have a button for advanced stuff then that would be awesome! 

Oh wait. KSP has premade presets and an advanced button. All we need is to arranged them better and add EVEN MORE OPTIONS!

[Capt. Hunt]

Frankly, I like being able to customize my gameplay,  I don't want to be shoehorned into a harder game because someone thought that it was "too easy."  Personally, I want to be able to enjoy a game, if some feature is getting in the way of that, I want to be able to turn it off or set it to a lower level.  This is why when I play a game with a campaign mode, like CoD, I almost always set it to the easiest difficulty.  I want to enjoy the story, not get killed every 30 seconds.

On the other hand, a lot of the features that KSP has added over the years are turned off by default.  I can see where a new player could get confused by that, especially if they don't take the time to explore the game's options.  As a compromise between no options at all and the current system, I would actually suggest that new options just be enabled by default.  That way new players won't miss them, and old players can play as they like.

[Curveball Anders]

10 hours ago, XLjedi said:

@mcwaffles2003 autostrut is indispensable.  I simply would've quit the game if it didn't exist.

EVA Struts, never have a station without an engineer.

 

[Terwin]

[snip]

Perhaps he would benefit from a restatement:

'Coding is hard (I have 30 years experience, so I know this is a fact) and having options only gives more opportunities to make a mistake in the code or break things.  Therefore all options should be set to exactly the way I want them set for all players to ensure my preferred method of play gets all of the QA resources and will have the fewest possible bugs.  This also makes it easier to add new features that I want.'

And while I agree that coding is hard(> 20 years here), it is the job of the designers and programmers to deliver what the customer wants/needs, not just what is easiest to program.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Vanamonde

[sturmhauke]

14 minutes ago, Terwin said:

And while I agree that coding is hard(> 20 years here), it is the job of the designers and programmers to deliver what the customer wants/needs, not just what is easiest to program.

Yeah I agree. I'm at about 10 years coding as a professional, and 40 total - I was noodling around on Commodore 64s and Apple ][s as a kid.

Is it harder to make a good piece of software with a lot of options? Yes. Is that an excuse not to implement a lot of options? Absolutely not.

[Frozen_Heart]

I honestly completely disagree.

 

Everyone likes to play slightly differently, and having options to choose from like re-entry heating, comms, life support, etc allows both hardcore and casual players to be catered for.

 

Mods are an awful substitute, as on consoles it's difficult/impossible to get mods, and when they're discontinued the people who were forced to use them to get the settings they wanted are out of luck.

[Bartybum]

14 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I think you will find that none of those limit your ability to create something ridiculous the least bit.

Except they will...

[snip]

Edited February 28, 2020 by Vanamonde

[mcwaffles2003]

15 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Stock Autostruts are basically dumb, and are only placed based on a couple adjacent parts. The strength of any joints is also entirely based on the diameter of them, so this makes any connections to adapters or non-tankage much weaker. KJR looks at the entire vehicle, and uses additional struts to bulk up joints so they act the way they should.

Even C&C had a punkbuster that allowed players to join if they had the exact same mods, and that was over 10 years ago. Also even if they had a "MMO-verse" that wouldn't prevent a LAN or Custom Server client from existing, so really we can't call it on modded Multiplayer just yet.

Also i don't really care about MP myself, so bring the mods on!!!

And any system that is looking for mods would prevent anyone with even the slightest deviation from joining; my C&C analogy for instance? Me and my friend kept getting mismatch errors even though we had the EXACT same mods loaded (Destructive Forces 1.4), and after about 30 minutes of troubleshooting it turned out it was a SINGLE LINE modification in my ini. files that the game was seeing and deciding to terminate the game. So if they implement a MMO-verse, and it's as strict as you think it'll be; then anything besides stock would be a no-go.

All of this was over LAN btw, as Gamespy had shut down years prior to this. Hell of a game though once we got it working though xD

Did you ever use the eagle red mod? I used to be in such anticipation for when they created a whole new faction... Never happened but good memories. 

 

I've not had this kind of problem with factorio yet where there's multiplayer and a LOT of mods. Something like AVC built into stock should be enough to verify compatibility with the server. So long as everyone has the same mods and same versions all should check out. (I hope) 

[Vanamonde]

Quite a bit of personal, acrimonious, and off-topic content has been trimmed from this thread. Having differing opinions about a game is fine, but getting nasty with each other them won't convince the other side that you are right. 

[James M]

7 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Everyone likes to play slightly differently, and having options to choose from like re-entry heating, comms, life support, etc allows both hardcore and casual players to be catered for.

 

Mods are an awful substitute, as on consoles it's difficult/impossible to get mods, and when they're discontinued the people who were forced to use them to get the settings they wanted are out of luck.

This right here. More options might be harder to program but you're not programming a game for only yourself. You're doing it for others. The more people that experience your code and are able to enjoy it, the more successful you have become. Furthermore, I'm a bit of a hipster.. so for me mods feel like a crime. I only want the game as it was meant and anything else feels totally uncool. I feel this way because in my opinion, if you are creating something and come up with an idea that you think would improve your creation and consciously CHOOSE not to pursue that, because you "Haven't got the time" or whatever, it feels like a crime (To me). Make a list or whatever you have to do to prioritize what matters most, but never stop trying to make your creation better. Leaving any portion of your work for others to do because you're lazy is a lame excuse.

Post note: I can understand Outsourcing, but that's a whole different beast. 

Edited February 28, 2020 by James M

[mcwaffles2003]

14 minutes ago, James M said:

Furthermore, I'm a bit of a hipster.. so for me mods feel like a crime. I only want the game as it was meant and anything else feels totally uncool. 

I agree with your message and don't wish to debate you. Just, you know the game itself is meant to be played with the intention of being a platform for mods right? 

[Brofessional]

Options are necessary to adjust the difficulty for less experienced players.

 

They could stand to reduce the number of options to a more concise "easy/normal/hard/extreme" choice though.  Beyond that people can use mods and tweaks if they want to really fine tune things.

Simplified difficulty choice would make the game more approachable for new players, and allow players to better compare their accomplishments and creations.

[Superfluous J]

23 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I wish you had picked literally any other feature since autostrut blows and leads to kraken attacks. Imagine if we were all stuck with it with no ability to turn it off

Autostruts are fantastic. The problem with them is that poorly auto-strutted craft blow and lead to Kraken attacks. That's why they're in advanced tweakables. You can't just autostrut everything to everything. If people used fuel tanks like they use autostrut, people would complain that fuel tanks suck.

I use Autostrut on every craft I make that's taller than 30 or so meters, and not once have I had an issue with it.

20 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I use KJR, autostrut killed any of my larger craft. This thing wobbled to hell and snapped even if I cheated it directly into orbit (with the manual struts as well)

To be fair, those monstrosities would never, ever be launchable in anything resembling real life.

EDIT to make this on topic.

Options are good in a game like this. I'd hate for half of the stuff others want to be forced into the game. I also don't want to be forced to mod stuff OUT of the game. I'd like my mods to add things, not remove them.

Edited February 28, 2020 by 5thHorseman

[Bartybum]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Just, you know the game itself is meant to be played with the intention of being a platform for mods right?

That’s kinda subjective though. As is your idea from earlier in this thread that the game’s meant to be played casually.

[mcwaffles2003]

16 minutes ago, Bartybum said:

That’s kinda subjective though. As is your idea from earlier in this thread that the game’s meant to be played casually.

I'd agree if Nate Simpson didn't say they're designing the game with enhanced modability in mind, directly meaning the game is built with the knowledge of and intention to be modded.

From the steam store page:

Quote

The technological developments made to the foundations of Kerbal Space Program 2 will build on the beloved modding capabilities of the original game

I could be wrong, but I don't believe KSP had any intention to be modded, just that was part of the growth from the games community and SQUAD didn't get in the way

 

Also, please point out where I said the game is only meant to be played casually, I believe my arguments so far have stated it should have options for the reason of allowing casual play AND hardcore play, not having the choice made for us and disenfranchising a large swath of the community on either side.

EDIT: This would also make no sense as I am currnetly enjoying a RO/RP-1 playthrough with remote tech and principia. I enjoy both sides of the spectrum.

Edited February 28, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[Bartybum]

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Also, please point out where I said the game is only meant to be played casually,

Okay I must have been dreaming. I swear I've seen you say the game is meant to be played casually, but I guess not D: Carry on

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Brofessional said:

Options are necessary to adjust the difficulty for less experienced players.

The only difficulty options that are needed are related to campaign difficulty. I explicitly excluded them from my argument in the final paragraph of the OP. If you're disabling entire systems to allow for easier difficulty, that means there's something wrong with the systems, or, more likely, something wrong with the way they're presented to the player.

KSP is a hard game, but many much more mainstream games are just as hard. The difference between, say, Civilization and KSP is that Civilization has excellent tutorials and annoying game advisors that walk you through initial learning curve. Civilization also doesn't let you switch off entire systems: instead, it lets you tune constants, like the bonuses or penalties the AI operates under, resource density, various world features, and so on. That's a well thought-out approach to presenting a complex game to new players, and that's how KSP2 ought to do it.

I can think of a few other games that have difficulty toggles for various features, and they're invariably a poor fit. For example, certain RPGs allow you to enable or disable friendly fire. The upshot is that all abilities with the possibility of friendly fire are radically different in their utility with the feature on or off: a fireball is much more powerful if you don't need to worry about scorching your friends. The consequence is that if the spell tree is balanced with the assumption that friendly fire is on, then fireballs will be OP for players with friendly fire off, and vice versa; moreover, players who start out with friendly fire off will learn tactics that will be plain bad if they switch it on.

KSP is really similar to this case. For example if you play with atmospheric heating off, then by the time you start doing stuff where atmospheric heating would be an issue, you'll be designing your craft wrong. When you get deeper into the game and decide to switch it on, you'll burn to a crisp, likely get frustrated, and possibly give up on the feature.

Conversely, if atmospheric heating was on from the get-go, you would have plenty of stuff to do before it becomes an issue. There really aren't many parts in there that would burn up when re-entering from LKO, and you can do a lot of stuff without ever re-entering from higher up than that. By the time you attempt something like, say, re-entering directly from Munar orbit, you're already well into the game -- otherwise you wouldn't be in Munar orbit in the first place. At that point, dealing with atmospheric heating is only an issue if you don't understand what that is, and there, tutorials and hints will get you unstuck. 

The same applies to all of KSP1's optional systems. Making them optional may have made sense in the context of the history of the game, but the secondary consequences of that decision have left KSP1 messier, flakier, harder to learn, and actually harder to learn than it would be had they been always on for everybody from the start.

 

5 hours ago, James M said:

More options might be harder to program but you're not programming a game for only yourself. You're doing it for others. The more people that experience your code and are able to enjoy it, the more successful you have become.

Yet most highly popular complex games do not have optional systems. How do you explain that?

[mcwaffles2003]

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

If you're disabling entire systems to allow for easier difficulty, that means there's something wrong with the systems, or, more likely, something wrong with the way they're presented to the player.

Or they just don't like it

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Civilization also doesn't let you switch off entire systems: instead, it lets you tune constants, like the bonuses or penalties the AI operates under, resource density, various world features, and so on. That's a well thought-out approach to presenting a complex game to new players, and that's how KSP2 ought to do it.

Yes, it does

Spoiler

 

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

KSP is a hard game, but many much more mainstream games are just as hard

Doesn't have to be

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

I can think of a few other games that have difficulty toggles for various features, and they're invariably a poor fit. For example, certain RPGs allow you to enable or disable friendly fire. The upshot is that all abilities with the possibility of friendly fire are radically different in their utility with the feature on or off: a fireball is much more powerful if you don't need to worry about scorching your friends. The consequence is that if the spell tree is balanced with the assumption that friendly fire is on, then fireballs will be OP for players with friendly fire off, and vice versa; moreover, players who start out with friendly fire off will learn tactics that will be plain bad if they switch it on.

And players have every right to play the game like that, just because it isn't your preference doesn't mean other people shouldn't be allowed to play that way

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

KSP is really similar to this case. For example if you play with atmospheric heating off, then by the time you start doing stuff where atmospheric heating would be an issue, you'll be designing your craft wrong. When you get deeper into the game and decide to switch it on, you'll burn to a crisp, likely get frustrated, and possibly give up on the feature.

Also, whats to stop your strawman from getting frustrated when they started playing the game without turning off that feature in the first place... Many people who try this game don't get far due to the difficulty curve

inb4 "but..but... tutorials"

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

The same applies to all of KSP1's optional systems. Making them optional may have made sense in the context of the history of the game, but the secondary consequences of that decision have left KSP1 messier, flakier, harder to learn, and actually harder to learn than it would be had they been always on for everybody from the start.

making them optional isn't what did that

30 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Yet most highly popular complex games do not have optional systems. How do you explain that?

Claiming what you say is false (as proven with my civ screenshot), just because a game is complex doesn't necessitate it lacks the ability to turn off features

NEXT

Edited February 28, 2020 by mcwaffles2003
un-spoilered the meme