Kerbal Space Program 2 to be released in 2022 [Discussion Thread]

[PDCWolf]

15 minutes ago, razark said:

Preorder?

As in, you haven't given them any money for KSP2 yet?

As in, you're not their customer at this point in time, and they are not beholden to you in any way?

 

Ok, then.

Customer of the franchise and almost all its related services. Guess you don't own a business that sells a product, otherwise this'd be basic knowledge: Brand loyalty sells, and has to be maintained, and when it fails, the entire business fails. This isn't even going into even more basic stuff like forming a good image in the eye of potential customers, specially since a game is not a product of need, so sales are all but guaranteed.

 

7 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Let's suppose they don't say anything, they stop interacting with the forum altogether and then, suddenly, they release all the info in a week culminating with the actual launch of the game at the end of that week, would any of us do anything different only because they choose to inform us when they started to sell the game and not months before?

Well, they first of all lost my preorder, and any preorder from people who follow the same principles. You might be loyal and/or impulsive enough, and with enough money to just throw at stuff you like, I'm not, I'm neither in fact.

8 minutes ago, Master39 said:

My answer is nope, I'm going to buy Elden Ring after they were tight lipped till the last possible minute (I still haven't because I'm playing other games), I'm going to buy Starfield regardless the fact that we only saw concept art and we'll probably see gameplay only in the weeks before the launch and I'm going to do the same for KSP.

I could afford Elden Ring right now and I want to play it, I'm not purchasing it till it drops at least to about 50% its current price in my region. You also seem to grossly overstate the interest in KSP2, if you go outside the forum and subreddit, the game is pretty much unknown and everyone already forgot whatever they saw on the last big gaming event they showed it on.

11 minutes ago, Master39 said:

The marketing strategy they choose for the game is not at all relevant for the quality of the game, it's not going to affect the result in any way, and most likely it's not even in the hands of the devs, being the game backed by a big publisher.

Only if you don't read into it. The marketing of Cyberpunk clearly reflected an extreme oversell, easy to see that the game wasn't going to be even close to promotion material, so much they had to start cancelling features 6 months before release, after 4 delays. Most of those features they cut, they didn't even manage to show once, whilst other appeared a single time in the whole years of marketing. Of course, the marketing granted them the most preordered game in history, but also the worst ever launch, multiple lawsuits, and the highest stock value drop ever for a game company. Even blizzard's "issues" didn't lose their stock as much value (40% loss for actiblizzard vs 80% for CDPR).

17 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Blizzard is not exactly an example of a good developer I would make, especially lately, but look on their comunication department regarding Overwatch 2, they did show 2 or 3 things, still no release window, delay after delay, no updates.

Wrong, they showed enough to drive their non loyalist community to outrage, as OVW2 was indistinguishable from OVW1, driving them into delays to actually make a product, the one they now are actually not showing stuff about.

19 minutes ago, Master39 said:

When the game will drop the whole community will forget about the wait and the hype, as always with all games.

The world is not "expecting" KSP2. There's almost 0 talk in any place that is not here, the subreddit, or the comments of KSP1 youtubers.

[Bej Kerman]

7 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

8 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Devs have got better things to do than pander to those that get a heart attack when they're not saturated by information for more than 3 seconds.

You mean the things they weren't doing that caused a 2 year delay? Also if you think a video every 3 months and a  15 second clip of an untextured asset every once in a while is "saturation"... we've clearly got very differing standards.

You are only being an example of someone who freaks out when 1. the devs put off the game so it releases in a better state, and 2. someone who demands information every 2 femtoseconds.

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

4 hours ago, razark said:

I guess I just don't see the big deal about waiting to find out about a game.  I'll buy it when it releases if it looks good, but until then, I'm going to be playing games I already have, having fun, and not caring much about it.

Well I do care about it. I've been waiting for it to be released in 2020. Then 2021. Now it's almost the middle of 2022 and I still have to read / watch interviews from 2-3 years ago to answer forum questions about it.

Or the 15 minute video they just posted?

[snip]

Edited April 30, 2022 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Bej Kerman]

[snip]

Pretty much everyone acts like they're owed information by the KSP 2 team, and whenever the slightest disruption in schedules happens people are quick to get upset.

[WelshSteW]

 

All the signs are that the marketing will kick up a notch fairly soon.

 

The little hidden picture thing in the videos is complete, the little sequence at the end of the videos looks like it will be done when the next video is released. To me, that means that the pre-build up is done, and the marketing campaign for release will start.

 

We just have to have a little more patience. Just a little bit. We've made it this far, another month or so shouldn't be too much. I honestly believe that's all it'll be. It's coming, and it's coming soon.

 

[PDCWolf]

[snip]

Oh yeah, I should totally be grateful I get to give them money, oh how magnificent and magnanimous of them to let me give them my money.

4 hours ago, snkiz said:

 The only reason you know anything about ksp 2 is they pulled the trigger prematurely, then everything changed, and then covid.

Private division had a product and pulled the trigger, then T2 formed a new studio and poached their employees, sending KSP2 to this new studio and leaving PD in the dust. THEN Covid. 

4 hours ago, snkiz said:

Seriously have a good look at the dev time on AAA of this scale.

Perception of scale is clearly subjective. Nothing on the footage looks like anything we can't get out of modded KSP1.

[snip]

Edited April 30, 2022 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[snkiz]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Pretty much everyone acts like they're owed information by the KSP 2 team, and whenever the slightest disruption in schedules happens people are quick to get upset.

I want information to, that's why I'm here. But I understand it's a privilege. Besides I'm quite happy with the footage they've shared. Quite frankly I in the camp that hopes MP will be future dlc. I don't believe the initial release needs that on top, and I'd hate to think that's holding things up. 

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Oh yeah, I should totally be grateful I get to give them money

You should be grateful that they've put many years of effort into something you're going to enjoy.

[snkiz]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Oh yeah, I should totally be grateful I get to give them money, oh how magnificent and magnanimous of them to let me give them my money.

Private division had a product and pulled the trigger, then T2 formed a new studio and poached their employees, sending KSP2 to this new studio and leaving PD in the dust. THEN Covid. 

Perception of scale is clearly subjective. Nothing on the footage looks like anything we can't get out of modded KSP1.

No one is forcing you to spend money. I'm not commenting on internal politics, that ship sailed a long time ago. Perception of scale requires some understanding on the the task they are trying to achieve. Modded ksp is AAA. Add up the collective time developing that. Why do you think  T2 is bankrolling this? for charity? [snip]

Edited April 30, 2022 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[TheOrbitalMechanic]

18 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Well, they first of all lost my preorder, and any preorder from people who follow the same principles. You might be loyal and/or impulsive enough, and with enough money to just throw at stuff you like, I'm not, I'm neither in fact.

We don't even know for sure if they'll offer preorders, but alright, then. Don't preorder it.

[Vl3d]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

15 minute video they just posted

And what did you learn about the game from that video? I can summarize it in 4 words: it's gonna be 'uge.

[snip]

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You should be grateful that they've put many years of effort into something you're going to enjoy.

I'm grateful to the devs and to Intercept. The Private Division PR department is completely absent. Do the forum moderators even get payed for their work? I'm actually curious if the people responsible for community growth and public relations actually value the work people constantly put in for this game.

There is really no reason to defend bad corporate communication practices. [snip]

Edited April 30, 2022 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Snark]

Various content has been redacted and/or removed due to insults, personal remarks, and flamebaiting, all of which are forbidden by the forum rules.

Folks, please play nice.  It's fine to argue.  It's fine to vehemently disagree.  Please confine your responses to the merits of the argument, however, and do not comment on your fellow users themselves-- personal remarks and put-downs are never appropriate.

If your argument is weak enough that you need to resort to name-calling and finger-pointing, you're not going to convince anyone.  Insults and flamebaiting don't win arguments and just make the forum a less pleasant place for everyone, including innocent bystanders.  So please don't do that.

Thank you for your understanding.

[linuxgurugamer]

5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Or the 15 minute video they just posted?

Huh?  What video, and where?  I can't find it on YouTube

[Pthigrivi]

4 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Huh?  What video, and where?  I can't find it on YouTube

Probably means the interstellar vid a couple weeks back. 

[linuxgurugamer]

12 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Probably means the interstellar vid a couple weeks back. 

That's what I thought, but he said "just posted", not "posted recently", so I was/am wondering what he referred to.

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You should be grateful that they've put many years of effort into something you're going to enjoy.

This is business, not a charity. I'm not "grateful" nor do I have to be. I'm on a market looking to buy a product and they're trying to get me to purchase theirs. 

5 hours ago, snkiz said:

No one is forcing you to spend money. I'm not commenting on internal politics, that ship sailed a long time ago. Perception of scale requires some understanding on the the task they are trying to achieve. Modded ksp is AAA. Add up the collective time developing that. Why do you think  T2 is bankrolling this? for charity? [snip]

Developing a game for X amount of time does not make it AAA, as the definition comes from budget, which makes it funnier considering KSP1 + mods are all passion works with almost negligible budget. On top of that, we really don't know what budget they're working with for KSP2, specially considering how little new stuff they've actually shown for it. It's taken them this amount of time to produce something that has been identified time and time again as "ksp1 with mods".

You are right that nobody is forcing me to spend money, but I'll remit myself to my sentence replying to the other poster I quoted.

5 hours ago, TheOrbitalMechanic said:

We don't even know for sure if they'll offer preorders, but alright, then. Don't preorder it.

I'm doing business with them, not with you. I'm free to demand and then purchase (or not) as much as they're free to completely ignore concerns like mine and lose my preorder along with those of people who share this point of view. 

[Pthigrivi]

6 hours ago, Vl3d said:

We're not talking about the devs here. We're talking about the communications and marketing department, about PR. It's good practice to be transparent and not keep people in the dark, constant communication builds a good reputation.

The thing is they are communicating with us, they just aren't giving us everything. They're not showing a full gameplay demo, or a full walk-through of colonization and tech progression, nor a full reveal on multiplayer. There are a lot of reasons why they would not yet show all those things, but the most important is that in all likelihood the game is not yet complete. They're still working on those things. If the game was complete they'd already be showing that stuff and giving a firm release date. All they've told is is that it will be released in FY 2022 and we've barely entered that. Its very likely that they have a few to several more months work before the things you are asking for are complete and ready to show. The fact that they aren't showing it to you isn't because they don't care or arent good at their jobs, its because they are wisely keeping some WIP under wraps until its 99% dialed in. Imagine if they started showing things like LS recyclers or regolith harvesters only for them to realize after play testing those elements aren't really very fun or cause big pacing problems and cut them? Imagine if they were to show some half-baked glitchy version of multiplayer rife with continuity problems? There's no reason that they should put themselves in that position, nor put you in the position to expect something that in the final analysis doesn't really work. 

So again, patience my man. All will be revealed in its proper time. You aren't being disrespected. The game just isn't done yet. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[PDCWolf]

47 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

So again, patience my man. 

I know this wasn't me you were quoting, and I agree they can't show stuff they haven't done yet, that should be pretty obvious.

First off, the 2022 date was taken off their earnings call (or another economic document, can't remember), and the release date on Steam, though that's been there for a long time. Point I'm trying to make here is 2022 is still not confirmed in a realistically compromising way. 

On this same note, as an information seeking customer, I'll add the fact that we've had a studio swap and a delay. All of that happened after they announced the game to be coming out only a single year later. I believe you'll have to give it to me there in wanting more information.

• Did they have anything done when they announced the game was only a year away?
• What have they done since then if the game was a single year away?
• Why do you need to give yourself an unconfirmed date till 31 December 2022 when you had a product that was a single year away from release?
• Why has it been 2 years and we're still seeing more or less the same thing with the only difference between footage from 2020 release date and 2022 release date being new parts?
• Why are we on the same year the game releases yet you're unable to show hands on gameplay and are still showing untextured asset renders?
• Why did you guys promise multiplayer for KSP1 and then never let out a single word about it again?
• Why has been KSP1 left abandoned in a super buggy state?
• Why is Breaking Ground even worse in the bug department, even when the community has already investigated (and solved) the issues?

These are pressing concerns that we are more than justified to have, that they've still failed to address. Even when they do not have a single obligation to answer, it does effect their public opinion of them.

Edited May 1, 2022 by PDCWolf

[t_v]

Really quickly, can someone link the new financial report? If I remember correctly it was supposed to come out in late March or early April, and I don’t know how KSP 2 figures in there. 

[Pthigrivi]

@PDCWolf I think those are all good questions and I'll try to answer them as concisely and honestly as I can, not personally being intimately involved with the process. In the months after the first trailer many folks including myself believed the originally advertised release date to be, shall we say, overly optimistic. None of us here knows what happened in the turmoil that followed, but if I were to read between the lines its likely some of the more passionate and earnest folks involved believed that given the scope the game needed more time to become something truly special. 

And I completely agree, there's a huge difference between a projected release window and an announced release date. Who knows! It could be mid or late 2023! It would be a bummer, but thats okay with me. I just want a good game, and as long as it takes it takes. I do think there's reason to believe however--again, reading between the lines--that it will probably be released within a year. The show and tell on procedural radiators for instance doesn't just tell us "Hey this is a cool thing we developed". They could very easily have just given us a few radiators from small to huge and let us deal with the inflexibility. If they didn't its because they felt like they had the time to do this right. There are also clues in the dev videos like the complete 'Karecibo' message implying, perhaps hopefully, that the next phase of marketing will be the game in a complete form. That might be 2 months or 10 months away, but it's probably closish. 

As to your last few questions; you should take a trip through the Multiplayer thread to get a sense of how difficult it would be build a functioning system let alone something that would please most people. KSP is 100% my favorite game of all time and I can say that and still admit that it was a buggy mess the whole time and career mode never actually worked. It was a novel product from a young studio, and the challenges they took on to produce something truly new in the world were both astonishing and the results were never perfect. Given the thousands of hours of genuinely engaging time I've gotten out of it Im more than happy with that. Intercept had the luxury of being able to take all those truly awesome fundamentals and try both to build them right from the ground up and to develop a system of exploration and colonization that really sings. I hope it does! And all the evidence I've seen from the dev blogs to the show and tells and featurettes lead me to believe they're taking the hard problems seriously. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[PDCWolf]

10 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

@PDCWolf I think those are all good questions and I'll try to answer them as concisely and honestly as I can, not personally being intimately involved with the process. In the months after the original trailer many folks including myself believed the originally advertised release date to be, shall we say, overly optimistic. None of us here knows what happened in the turmoil that followed, but if I were to read between the lines its likely some of the more passionate and earnest folks involved believed that given the scope the game needed more time to become something truly special. 

And I completely agree, there's a huge difference between a projected release window and an announced release date. Who knows! It could mid or late 2023! It would be a bummer, but thats okay with me. I just want a good game, and as long as it takes it takes. I do think there's reason to believe however--again, reading between the lines--that it will probably be released within a year. The show and tell on procedural radiators for instance doesn't just tell us "Hey this is a cool thing we developed". They could very easily have just given us a few radiators from small to huge and let us deal with the inflexibility. If they didn't its because they felt like they had the time to do this right. There are also clues in the dev videos like the complete 'Karecibo' message implying, perhaps hopefully, that the next phase of marketing will be the game in a complete form. That might be 2 months or 10 months away, but it's probably closish. 

As to your last few questions; you should take a trip through the Multiplayer thread to get a sense of how difficult it would be build a functioning system let alone something that would please most people. KSP is 100% my favorite game of all time and I can say that and still admit that it was a buggy mess the whole time and career mode never actually worked. It was a novel product from a young studio, and the challenges they took on to produce something truly new in the world were both astonishing and the results were never perfect. Given the thousands of hours of genuinely engaging time I've gotten out of it Im pretty okay with that. Intercept had the luxury of being able to take all those truly awesome fundamentals and trying both to build them right from the ground up and to develop a system of exploration and colonization that really sings. I hope it does! And all the evidence I've seen from the dev blogs to the show and tells and featurettes lead me to believe they're taking the hard problems seriously. 

The thing is I've been through that thread, and if you know about developing software, or games, you'd know "pleasing most people" is just a thing that doesn't happen, specially with engineering type games. Whilst the devs, you, and other participants might like to play hide and seek behind the "huge challenge", the community has already gone and made 2 different multiplayer systems work, in the shape of mods. Further on I imagine that, at the very least, an idea of how to solve the challenges and implement the solution would have already existed both times it was promised, for the original and sequel games. Otherwise there's another concern for my list: Why promise multiplayer 2 separate times when you had 0 idea how to work it out?

The rest of your post is speculative answers to my other concerns, which really bring nothing but faith to the table, and I don't include faith in my financial transactions.

[Pthigrivi]

3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

I don't include faith in my financial transactions.

I hear you, and no one should treat their financial decisions frivolously.  You should absolutely scrutinize before buying anything. But there's time yet before that happens. By all means wait until the full gameplay videos are released, until reviews come in, until the game is past that rocky post-release buggy phase that all games experience until you're comfortable making an investment in your own time. Thats all completely reasonable. You and I both are just hoping at this point. 

[PDCWolf]

1 minute ago, Pthigrivi said:

I hear you, and no one should treat their financial decisions frivolously.  You should absolutely scrutinize before buying anything. But there's time yet before that happens. By all means wait until the full gameplay videos are released, until reviews come in, until the game is past that rocky post-release buggy phase that all games experience until you're comfortable making an investment in your own time. Thats all completely reasonable. You and I both are just hoping at this point. 

Let's not confuse waiting patiently with silence. If concerns are not voiced, how can we expect them to be addressed? 

[shdwlrd]

@PDCWolf Put yourself into the devs shoes. You give info, and you're accused of holding back; told by some "internet expert" you're doing it wrong; or you should be working faster. You try to explain an unpopular decision, you're accused of lying, not listening to the community, the project is going to hell, etc. No matter what you say, honestly or not, it's never good enough. So why say anything at all? That's what happens 95% of the time. You don’t know about a game or sequel until it's ready and about to release. 

Despite what you think, Intercept, Squad, Private Division don’t owe you or the community anything. They don't have to answer questions, they don't have to release information, they don't even have to complete KSP2. This isn't some crowd funded venture where you already have given money to them. It's funded by some faceless company. This faceless company is the only people that can demand anything from the devs, not you or the community. That's just the facts of business. You may not like them, but it is what it is.

[Pthigrivi]

17 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Let's not confuse waiting patiently with silence. If concerns are not voiced, how can we expect them to be addressed? 

By all means voice them! Im not telling you that you shouldn't or that they're unfounded. Im from a small state in New England where we don't place much faith or value in sales promises. A thing either has real value or it doesn't and salesmanship is just so much hot air. I don't need or want to be schmoozed. When the time comes to put my money down I'll do my own assessment. Until then hope is all we have. 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

@PDCWolf Put yourself into the devs shoes. You give info, and you're accused of holding back; told by some "internet expert" you're doing it wrong; or you should be working faster. You try to explain an unpopular decision, you're accused of lying, not listening to the community, the project is going to hell, etc. No matter what you say, honestly or not, it's never good enough. So why say anything at all? That's what happens 95% of the time. You don’t know about a game or sequel until it's ready and about to release. 

Despite what you think, Intercept, Squad, Private Division don’t owe you or the community anything. They don't have to answer questions, they don't have to release information, they don't even have to complete KSP2. This isn't some crowd funded venture where you already have given money to them. It's funded by some faceless company. This faceless company is the only people that can demand anything from the devs, not you or the community. That's just the facts of business. You may not like them, but it is what it is.

It's like you're not reading me. They're free to not explain and not address concerns, and remain completely silent until the product is done and released. I'm also free to voice my concerns and do whatever I want with the answers and info they provide or with their silence if they don't. My concerns and reasoning are as valid as their response or lack thereof, and at the very least I'm gonna make sure my concerns are clearly laid out, just so that "you didn't ask" isn't an excuse down the line.

We should also take the time to learn a bit: Developers don't say anything, they're hired on a payroll, come in and do their work. PR/Marketing teams are the ones doing the talking to us, and they're also on a payroll and a clock, and are specifically paid to obtain the best possible response to a product.