The Youtube Illusion

[Guest]

Also footnote: This isn't telling people how to play the game. This is me explaining my idea why many people get stuck early on in the game and just leave it or don't make progress.

What is my theory:

The Youtube Illusion is what happens when

"a KSP player who is trying to progress in the game is limited to the designs of popular youtubers instead of attempting trial and failure"

Basically when a KSP video comes out people will start to build their crafts based on the original video of someone's.

What is the problem with this:

So what if subscribers to these channels use the spacecrafts and rocket designs. Unfortunately it causes a problem where they get stuck in the game. Because of external things that the youtubers left out of their videos or mission choices that might not be actually the best or the use of mods. People sometimes ask for my help with KSP crafts and I can tell you a lot of the things that the troubling crafts all have in common is that they have a trait in the style of a youtuber.  One time there was this person who didn't understand how to make an Eve lander and basically just copied Matt's design, made a few tweaks, and try to fly it thinking that since they built it they can fly it successfully. Now, if you ever have done an Eve Crew mission you would know that you would have to fly the craft in such a way to make it successful and your piloting skills are what matters at the end of the day.

The problem is that without the creativity you can't learn rocket science or discover new ways to make a mission better. It's how the skilled ksp players are made. When you find your own style. the bigger problem is that while the producers of the content have gone through the design loop, the people building on top of it didn't. Causing frustration of "it should work because [insert name here] made it work." 

Probably the worst thing that comes out of this is that they don't build on personal experience and feed on others. Causing some questions that could have been answered just if they tested it, they would have found out. Most of the stuff I learned came from experiments I made and little tests. I cannot stress enough the best learning system is the testing system. Tutorials are great and all, but your best experience is gonna come out of you doing it yourself.

Why do I bring this up:

I am not trying to:

- Cause fights

- tell people how to play/enjoy the game

- to not watch KSP videos

- Or to shame people for asking questions

What I am trying to say is:

KSP videos are meant to be enjoyable/inspirational not for how-tos (unless stated as that.) And I want to share awareness that if you want to be good at making spacecraft and flying rockets, the best way how to do that is by personal experience.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Guest
grammer correction, some rewording, and to make it a better explainer

[Souptime]

Huh, but yeah i guess i can see that happening. Never saw it myself but i agree with your topic, and another thing with him:

Spoiler

recently a youtuber named SpaceLab has kinda been mocking matt, on his discord he got upset because matt's percy recreation got more views than his (Spacelabs it MUCH higher quality and i understand why he's mad) and made a video mocking it: [snip] Don't go out and bully him (Obvisouly)

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Gargamel
Portions Redacted by Moderator

[Chequers]

I'd never watched a Matt Lowne video before, so went and watched a few before replying.

He's obviously very familiar with the game - understands the mechanics extremely well. But the most defining thing, is how creative he is. He's got plenty of videos across multiple games - particularly sandbox  games. Evidently, that's what he's great at. Pretty inspiring.

He knows how to use the game to create some incredible looking designs - but that's his art. And that leads onto a bigger issue here:

The goal of KSP, as with any game, is to be entertained and have fun. And I don't think you should define other peoples' fun.

Some people aren't interested in creativity. Sure, they can appreciate the skill, creativity, and design - but they're not interested in learning how to create their own . They want to explore other planets, and challenge themselves to do the various milestones, such as getting to orbit, landing on the Mun, or docking in space. Or even just seeing new things, using mods to handle all of the flight. For them, the less time spent in the VAB, the better.

Others, like myself, enjoy the thrill of a perfectly engineered craft, that maximises efficiency to get the job done. But I don't bemoan anyone that launches an insane, oversized, overpowered monstrosity - because that's their version of fun. I know someone who plays KSP purely to design great looking craft; if they can actually fly, it's a bonus. 

Now for those who are trying to become skilful (from a mechanics point of view) in the game, then yes - there are fundamental principles that must be learned, and simply copying a Matt Lowne design doesn't mean they'll be able to fly it. But that's true regardless of the craft they use - whether replicating a tutorial rocket, or using a pre-made stock craft. Or whether they watch videos and emulate those designs or not. They're probably emulating those designs because they aren't able to do it themselves. And while it might be true that trial-and-erroring ideas until they work is the best way to learn for some, it certainly isn't for everyone.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Chequers

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Chequers said:

He knows how to use the game to create some incredible looking designs - but that's his art. And that leads onto a bigger issue here:

The goal of KSP, as with any game, is to be entertained and have fun. And I don't think you should define other peoples' fun.

Some people aren't interested in creativity. Sure, they can appreciate the skill, creativity, and design - but they're not interested in learning how to create their own . They want to explore other planets, and challenge themselves to do the various milestones, such as getting to orbit, landing on the Mun, or docking in space. Or even just seeing new things, using mods to handle all of the flight. For them, the less time spent in the VAB, the better.

. And while it might be true that trial-and-erroring ideas until they work is the best way to learn for some, it certainly isn't for everyone.

Yeah that's my point. The people who are trying to copy the crafts of other youtubers then trying to learn the game based of youtubers. I wasn't trying to say how people should play the game. But, I will edit the post to make that point out a little bit more.

Ok I think the theory has been reworded to be better.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Souptime said:

Huh, but yeah i guess i can see that happening. Never saw it myself but i agree with your topic, and another thing with him:

recently a youtuber named SpaceLab has kinda been mocking matt, on his discord he got upset because matt's percy recreation got more views than his (Spacelabs it MUCH higher quality and i understand why he's mad) and made a video mocking it: <snip> Don't go out and bully him (Obvisouly)

-deleted comment because I found things in video to point I don’t like it anymore-

Edited October 29, 2020 by Guest

[Guest]

I have also renamed it because I felt like I was targeting Matt directly when I am targeting KSP videos overall

[Superfluous J]

I'm not quite sure I see this as a problem, other than the DM thing.

People should be asking questions on the forum, to the community, to allow the community to answer. DMing one person gets you - at the absolute best - one answer. Asking in a public forum harnesses the entire knowledge base of everybody who wants to participate.

I'll be blatantly honest here, if someone DMs me a general question I'm most likely going to ignore it. I answer questions because I want to answer that question, not because someone else needs the question answered.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Superfluous J said:

snip

I don't think I am wording my statement correctly because it seems like it sounds like people are getting from it "You need to play the game this way" or "If you are asking a question that's bad."

But that's not what I am trying to say, and it's mostly not a problem on the forums to be honest.

My goal is that people can take away from this is that youtubers make content for content and not a how to (unless stated). And that people are basing their skills off youtube videos that really should be for entertainment and inspiration and not a backbone for your mission. 

But I don't want to create a topic that causes people to think I am trying to enforce something. And if that's what people are taking out of it then I might as well delete this and ask for this to be locked because I don't want to cause bickering. 

[HebaruSan]

If someone tries to copy a craft from Matt Lowne or anyone else and can't make it work, ideally they would be driven into the same analyze-diagnose-fix-retry loop as if they had started from scratch. Except they have a video reference showing that the concept can work, to which they can compare their own efforts if they're clever.

I'm sure it's frustrating to receive a random PM asking for help with a craft, but it doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of creativity. Folks are going to look totally incompetent in the early stages of the learning curve no matter what.

[Guest]

Hey guys, on my forum account I have written an apology about this thread and something else. I have asked this thread to be locked for the message I was trying to see wasn’t written well and has cause since problems of what I mean.

[Rejected Spawn]

I normally don't jump on these topics but what in the world could make someone go and repeatedly bother a youtuber who gets thousands of comments and messages daily, just to ask a question they really ought to go and ask on a forum if any somewhat experienced player who's in the mood would kindly help with? This is completely absurd, I don't usually act on emotion but this frankly outright upsets me, the whole reasoning sounds so incredibly self centered and devoid of empathy that I have to call it out and get it out of my system.

More to the point on the topic now, it's already been said here that one does not get to dictate how another should play KSP and that some players just don't have the imagination to make the craft they want, not much can be done there. However when it comes to relying on youtubers for info on how to play the game that entire problem is a failure in KSP itself, it has nothing to do with the youtubers. There's good reason that KSP2 will have a smart help system to ensure this doesn't happen again, I was very happy to find out the devs had arrived at the same solution I did: the game understands what's currently happening and tries to guide the player with only the thing they're currently trying to accomplish - instead of wrapping things up in long and boring tutorials stuck "outside" in the main menu, the game will try to only "spoil" a single thing that a player gets stuck on to get them moving again and encourage the player to overcome as many things as possible on their own. I really can't see the point of getting into the good and bad of KSP1 youtubers, I've been following Matt Lowne for years and I feel sorry for him having to repeatedly try to appease viewers who don't even understand how to do the most basic things in the game while he still tries to keep us long time followers entertained by doing something more creative than super basic almost tutorial level historic mission replicas we're sick and tired of seeing over and over. As for which youtuber becomes popular or not that is also not something that can be blamed on them, some players have a certain personality and make a certain type of content and that appeals to a certain type of viewer, nobody should ever get to just go and bash another youtuber for having "lower quality but more views" - if a video just isn't getting popular despite "quality" then it just isn't reaching the target audience that actually wants that exact type of quality, or that audience is simply much smaller. Many of the biggest youtubers in the world produce absolute garbage but they manage to *entertain* and that's all they need to accomplish.

[Vanamonde]

Thread closed by OP's request.