after seeing what happened to Cyberpunk... I hope KSP 2 takes their time

[shdwlrd]

14 minutes ago, paul_c said:

"CATNIP" - Cheapest Available Technology Not Incurring Prosecution.

 sounds like the perfect mantra for an utility or heavy industry 

[The Aziz]

Cyberpunk, after being delayed over and over again - most likely to fit into modern technologies, new gen of consoles, raytracing and all that - shouldn't be released on PS4/X1 in the first place. In the state we've seen it few years ago, yes, maybe. Take a look at minimum requirements for pc and tell me how the hell was that supposed to run well on 7 year old hardware. Looks like somewhere in the middle of the development process they should've looked back and think "hey, is this still going to work on PS4?" But they didn't, and here we are.

Now, this is another example confirming my thesis that ksp2 should not be released on old gen. Ever. And certainly not in 2022. As you can see, longer development does not help with optimization for old tech. Instead, they will do everything to make it work and look good on new tech.

Another example (however, that one actually worked in the end) Prey. Announced in 1997, released in 2006. It changed a lot, to fit market demand of 21st century, and it was still amazing, both visually and gameplay wise.

[linuxgurugamer]

36 minutes ago, paul_c said:

I used to work in effluent treatment plant (designing), where the criteria was often "CATNIP" - Cheapest Available Technology Not Incurring Prosecution.

I love it!  Especially for cat lovers! 

[Mikenike]

On 12/16/2020 at 3:48 PM, Bej Kerman said:

Easy vote. Delayed.

Same. If it takes 5 years to get here, so be it, I want a good game that I can enjoy. The delay just gives KSP1 devs more time to develop new stuff. And who knows what'll come next, maybe a collab with Roskosmos??

3 hours ago, paul_c said:

Just heard on the main news that Sony have pulled Cyberpunk from the Playstation store (and are doing no quibble refunds), due to the number of bugs/glitches.

Yeah, and both companies were saying that they were refusing refunds. That's why I buy games a month or longer in their life cycles. I did this with COD MW2019, BOCW, Warzone, Stormworks BAR, MSFS2020 and countless others. 

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, Mikenike said:

5 hours ago, paul_c said:

Just heard on the main news that Sony have pulled Cyberpunk from the Playstation store (and are doing no quibble refunds), due to the number of bugs/glitches.

Yeah, and both companies were saying that they were refusing refunds. That's why I buy games a month or longer in their life cycles. I did this with COD MW2019, BOCW, Warzone, Stormworks BAR, MSFS2020 and countless others. 

I'll never understand why people preorder and order games less than a month after release. Be prepared for disappointment, preorderers.

[Mikenike]

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'll never understand why people preorder

There is typically an incentive, closed pre-beta, exculsive skins, BPs, etc. I personally could care less about all that. I'll occasionally preorder a game. I technically did it for Stormworks as it just recently made it to its official release. But I gave the game time to mature first, I didn't just buy it when it first released, I did the same for Ravenfield. I got it like 20ish major updates into its fully open beta (the SINGLE dev is a phenominal guy, and he works hard, plans to have it in official release form in 2021). But I gave both games time to reach potential. And both already have huge followings, despite being almost an indie game because of dev limits. I know for a fact that BOCW had some MAJOR bugs upon release, and Warzone still has bugs. I expect this, despite it being a AAA game title. I fully understand the fact that there will be bugs at launch. That's why I hold back, because major bugs get fixed typically within the first few weeks and the iron out the game from then on. MSFS is starting to get revamps in major metropolis' and cities, and its been 4 months since launch. It had its share of bugs at the start, especially with multiplayer and desync issues with their serves, but those were fixed relatively quickly. 

And as for Cyberpunk, I think that CDPR will be know now for the flop of Cyberpunk, and not the greatness of Witcher 3. I think that unless they fix everything SOON, they will either go under, or become a forgotten company. One of the past, where in the future, someone will ask if they remember who CDPR even was, and a person would tell them before or after cyberpunk? The industry has changed a lot since '15, and I think that CDPR would have been better revamping Witcher 1 and 2.  By the time that Cyberpunk gets fixed, GTA 6 will be here, and all the player will come over there. Because it will be newer, and better than both GTA5 and Cyerpunk, hopefully...

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, Mikenike said:

By the time that Cyberpunk gets fixed, GTA 6 will be here, and all the player will come over there. Because it will be newer, and better than both GTA5 and Cyerpunk, hopefully...

By the time Cyberpunk get fixed people will have realized that comparing it with GTA makes no sense at all, and never did, hopefully.

[K^2]

4 hours ago, paul_c said:

The point I was making is, 'critical' for a game is basically down to commercial success (and keeping out of the news headlines). Apparently the creators of Cyberpunk have lost quite a considerable amount.

Cyberpunk made bank. It payed for itself at least half-over just on the pre-orders, and even with Sony refunds, the bottom line is, the game payed for itself. The company is in the black, and will only recover further with upcoming fixes and DLC. Stock took a major dive, because it was inflated by high expectations and bad response really shook everyone, but at the end of the day, stockholders care about profits, and Cyberpunk was very profitable, so I expect the stocks will recover. But company took a lot of damage, so clearly, it's not that simple.

And then there are mobile games, which are responsible for more revenue than all the consoles combined, and business there is 100% marketing. Quality of the game just isn't even a factor in how much money is being made. The app needs to not crash, but that's a low bar if you are building on top of an established framework, and innovation is completely unnecessary. That's not to say that there aren't some great mobile games, but they are being made precisely because somebody made it a goal to make a good game, rather than just make money.

Execs of companies like EA and Activision notwithstanding, people don't make games simply to make money. Almost no matter what you are doing in games, you have better opportunities for making money. And that carries over into how games are designed. Profitability of the game is not a goal in itself. We need to make profitable games so that we can make more games. Sometimes, we make games geared towards profitability to make sure we have a budget to make a game that takes more risks, one that we know might not turn profit.

So yeah, game industry is one of the places where, "As profitable as possible," isn't usually a goal. There are money grabs. And there are your cash projects that keep everything else afloat, sure. But on the net, if you are in it just to make money, you probably won't stay in games for long. And this is why, ultimately, it's creatives who decide what the critical goals for the game are, not marketing. And yes, they are experienced enough to steer the game towards something that will not put company in the red, because they want to be asked to make more games in the future. But profit is not the primary goal by the long shot.

[dprostock]

It is incredible that there are people who believe, to this day, that waiting means having a good product at their disposal.

[paul_c]

Its as much to do with making the judgement, is it better to delay a launch and what do you do with the time it buys you; or manage a bunch of deferred issues in a live environment?

I've been involved with software launches where the commercial pressure to launch was so great, it did with loads of bugs, and the inevitable trouble they caused. And also a few where the decision-makers were able to keep their cool, and delayed it until pretty much all the known issues were resolved and a lot of the desirable extras were added in also - resulting in a very smooth and trouble-free user experience. 

I think KSP and Cyberpunk are quite far apart in the way they've been managed (fortunately). And today's announcement that Cyberpunk is getting pulled off of Sony has meant I'll put my hard-earned cash somewhere else, no matter how good the game looks in reviews etc....

[dprostock]

If one day, the KSP2 makes littoff, I'll wait for it to come out as a gift on a platform like Steam. 

[Kerbart]

No amount of testing will reveal what you get within a day of releasing a game. While proper testing takes every scenario  imaginable into account, it's limited to only imaginable scenarios. Drop it into the market and within an hour you'll have someone complaining that when they do x, y, z the game freezes. Followed by developer team wondering why anyone would do that.

It's an illusion to think that a delayed game will be glitch-less. Bring it to the market to get those glitches out. But make clear to your customers what they're getting, reward them for their boldness and push out updates in rapid succession in those first weeks.

[Serenity]

Where is the option in the poll, delayed and glitchy, what cyberpunk was and what kerbal 2 will be.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Boyster

[K^2]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

No amount of testing will reveal what you get within a day of releasing a game.

True words. But the big disappointments of the past couple of years have had the sort of bugs you really can't miss.

I have things to say about QA in game dev, some good and some just the opposite, but we've been seeing some systematic failures that go far beyond poor testing.

I'm afraid, big winners have been Unreal and Unity. Many of the releases on these engines have been lackluster, but I don't recall any total clusterfrags recently. Say what you want about asset pipeline and aggressive licensing, but having a dedicated team with multi-billion budget work on the core engine certainly has advantages.

[Lord Aurelius]

14 hours ago, K^2 said:

True words. But the big disappointments of the past couple of years have had the sort of bugs you really can't miss.

I have things to say about QA in game dev, some good and some just the opposite, but we've been seeing some systematic failures that go far beyond poor testing.

I'm afraid, big winners have been Unreal and Unity. Many of the releases on these engines have been lackluster, but I don't recall any total clusterfrags recently. Say what you want about asset pipeline and aggressive licensing, but having a dedicated team with multi-billion budget work on the core engine certainly has advantages.

I'm not in game dev but currently work in hardware/software testing and absolutely agree that there's deep systemic issues. Like with many things it seems to be upper management wanting fast and cheap most of the time and not considering that it won't be good, and often design best practices (requirements, documentation) that are required for good testing, along with time and resources to actually do the testing are popular places to try to cut costs and make up schedule time.

[K^2]

5 hours ago, Lord Aurelius said:

I'm not in game dev but currently work in hardware/software testing and absolutely agree that there's deep systemic issues. Like with many things it seems to be upper management wanting fast and cheap most of the time and not considering that it won't be good, and often design best practices (requirements, documentation) that are required for good testing, along with time and resources to actually do the testing are popular places to try to cut costs and make up schedule time.

I won't speak for every studio, but I've worked in these where upper management from CEO down wanted to make good games. So it's not like it's a conscious decision to throw away quality in the name of cheap product. It is a manager's job to try and optimize things, to reduce overhead. And the further you are away from work being done, the harder it is to see when it's starting to do harm. And yeah, the solution is better structure, more documentation, more testing at every level. But these things also cost resources, and when you're used to certain amount of it sufficing, and then the studio grows ten-fold, it might be difficult to realize that you didn't grow the support infrastructure with it.

Good leadership will always take responsibility for it, of course, but I think simply blaming problems a game has on leadership not having the right goals is missing the mark too often.

[Lisias]

42 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Good leadership will always take responsibility for it, of course, but I think simply blaming problems a game has on leadership not having the right goals is missing the mark too often.

It's always a management problem.

However, leadership != management. What's also a management problem.  

What I think it happened is that someone, facing some serious financial constraints due the current affairs in the World, decided to force the pre sale  of the product in order to have some cash and avoid having to take harsh decisions - and by doing it, trowed the hot potato to someone else's hands. The idiot intended to earn the benefits from the stunt while letting someone else getting the heat for the problems/consequences.

However, now and then the weak side of the equation is not able to save the day, and so.... 1 Bi USD evaporates form the stockholder's pockets. This is a problem extremely hard to dismiss and let someone else handle it.

It' not different from how Software is developed nowadays - with everybody taking the easiest path without regarding the consequences for everybody else - what's make sense, since usually managers are promoted from the working-force.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Lisias
tyops. as usulla.

[ARS]

I prefer they take their time to finish and polish KSP2, even of it means delaying the release date. Glitch and bugs at release is inevitable, no game is perfect, but there's a major difference between glitch/ bugs that occurs during normal plays and those that happens during abnormal play. Take KSP for example, if your SSTO suddenly stages it's part in flight even though it has no staging at all, then yeah, that's a very serious one that isn't supposed to happen in normal play. On the other hand, the one that happens during the abnormal play is the one that happens during action that the player does not expected to do in normal play, like how Danny2462 found all of his game breaking shenanigans because you're not supposed to grab Kerbal and pull them apart with 2 asteroid grabbing claws. Though this also makes me say that, in the eyes of Kerbal: "there are no glitches/bugs in KSP, only krakens"

[Incarnation of Chaos]

What i find funny is apparently everyone forgot how buggy TW3 was on release, even now it still has issues. Oh and that released on the current gen with some pretty sketch bugs and performance also, but they eventually got it to the point where it's considered one of the better modern games. Any piece of software like a game is not going to see a public release without something interesting cropping up.

Should there be more effort to reduce these bugs? Probably, but the longer a game isn't shipping is the longer you're losing money. And despite the bugs it's still going to receive critical acclaim and reviews, along with being the new benchmark for PC enthusiasts all over.  CDPR made a calculated business decision to release when they did, and it looks like it paid off handsomely for them. 

KSP2 i expect will be a mess on release, and unless every review i see points otherwise I'm not even going to consider buying it for several months after at least. That's if the base game proves to be what was promised in the first place as well.

But then why delay? If you can't ever release something perfect, why not just throw it out there?  Because there's a serious diminishing return on the amount of stability and bugs you can quash after release for certain things, and there's also diminishing returns on how much stability and bugs you'll gain by further delays as well. So you have to look at the project in question, figure out where on this roller coaster of an approximation function you are and decide when to pull the trigger. 

KSP2 and CP2077 might not even be similar enough for a comparison to be made in the first place, in KSP2 there's multiple systems that comprise the core game play that if they aren't done right the first time, they'll never work the intended way from release on. So while they might not nail the release, if those core systems aren't in shambles I'd say KSP2 will shape up to be something nice in the end.

 

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

What i find funny is apparently everyone forgot how buggy TW3 was on release, even now it still has issues.

The problem is that, this time, they messed up on the Consoles. People pays premium for Consoles for a reason, and they broke the expectation.

Worse, they dragged Microsoft and Sony to their problem, without coordinating with them first. They should not had mentioned refunds before talking to them first. Microsoft and Sony had their hands forced on this issue, and they will respond in kind and make them an example, otherwise they will fall hostage from the remaining publishers.

They also rigged the reviews, inducing console players to buy a product that was not up to the reviews published (from PC version).

Things are way worse than it appears... This can end pretty bad...

On a side note, a friend of mine bought the game. His impression? The game is fantastic, he is going to play it with or without bugs (but will be be sad by applying updates). The tragedy of the history is essentially this: they would had way less bad press if they delayed the game again, or even launched only the PC Version explaining that they need more time to trim down problems on Consoles (and offering a treat to everyone on Console that had bought the game and choose to wait, or even a early access program for people willing to help - believe me, most of them would).

But...

 

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

Good leadership will always take responsibility for it, of course, but I think simply blaming problems a game has on leadership not having the right goals is missing the mark too often.

You are right. however... Once the money stops to flow and jobs start to burn, no leader or manager will take money from their pockets to pay the developer's bills.

Every time I hear some manager saying "I take full responsibility", all what I see is a P/R stunt. They already have responsibility for the problem, it's on their job description - trying to wave it would render a law suit.

And, as I said before, "full responsibility" is just a P/R stunt - when the worst happens, not a single one of them will be prosecuted and have their personal assets to pay the developer's salary, the developers will be fired, the consumers will be left high and dry and that's it.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Lisias
Kraken damned auto-completes...

[Incarnation of Chaos]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

The problem is that, this time, they messed up on the Consoles. People pays premium for Consoles for a reason, and they broke the expectation.

Worse, they dragged Microsoft and Sony to their problem, without coordinating with them first. They should not had mentioned refunds before talking to them first. Microsoft and Sony had their hands forced on this issue, and they will respond in kind and make them an example, otherwise they will fall hostage from the remaining publishers.

They also rigged the reviews, inducing console players to buy a product that was not up to the reviews published (from PC version).

Things are way worse than it appears... This can end pretty bad...

On a side note, a friend of mine bought the game. His impression? The game is fantastic, he is going to play it with or without bugs (but will be be sad by applying updates). The tragedy of the history is essentially this: they would had way less bad press if they delayed the game again, or even launched only the PC Version explaining that they need more time to trim down problems on Consoles (and offering a treat to everyone on Console that had bought the game and choose to wait, or even a early access program for people willing to help - believe me, most of them would).

But...

 

 

Oh i know all of that, but it really doesn't change my opinion on it.

But they shouldn't have released on the Xbox One and PS4, hell even the Xbox One X and PS4 pro likely would've struggled. They're using severely underclocked mobile CPU going on 8 years old, and CP2077 is a game that requires CPU grunt for the world, it's NPCs, their scripts etc.

PS5 and Xbox Series X would've been fine though.

Yeah they got bad press, but like you mentioned. Even if it comes to the legal avenue, it won't matter. They made their money, the game is pumped by reviews (Both rigged and legit), and all of this will be water under the bridge for the majority of customers in months. Just in time for another DLC, expansion or w/e. This isn't me approving of how they handled it, just more saying this is what I've come to expect from the games industry and consumers now.

I do think the fact they went and told reviewers they could only use canned footage is pretty scummy, completely destroys whatever reputation they had before. They've basically joined the ranks of Activision and EA in my mind by manipulating reviews like that.

[mcwaffles2003]

I wish game studios would let out blooper reels of funny bugs they came across in development that they had solved before release.

It's just sad that game studios have to always present the current state of development as unrealistically well built. If they were more open about the state of the game they could probably even  suffer far less backlash when delaying with their potential customers. I feel the large majority of gamers who anticipate upcoming releases would wait until any game is finished so delaying isn't going to lose customers so long as the game is intending to eventually be what is already commonly advertised.

TL;DR if you believe your idea for a game is good present it honestly  and ideally

[K^2]

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

You are right. however... Once the money stops to flow and jobs start to burn, no leader or manager will take money from their pockets to pay the developer's bills.

Every time I hear some manager saying "I take full responsibility", all what I see is a P/R stunt. They already have responsibility for the problem, it's on their job description - trying to wave it would render a law suit.

And, as I said before, "full responsibility" is just a P/R stunt - when the worst happens, not a single one of them will be prosecuted and have their personal assets to pay the developer's salary, the developers will be fired, the consumers will be left high and dry and that's it.

There are some well-known cases of execs in Japan taking salary cuts and skipping bonuses to avoid having to fire employees, but also, I'm not sure that's a good thing. In Japan, they have a very different philosophy on employment, and employees are supposed to be with a company for the long haul. In fact, if you try to voluntarily leave a job, you might not be able to find another. That kind of job security really starts to borderline on exploitation.

I work in California. All employment here is at-will. Myself or my employers can terminate our relationship at any time for any reason. And for skilled work, that's how it should be. Good devs are hard to find. Like, really hard to find. If you have experience, you are valuable. Not all studio heads get that, sure. But if a studio would rather fire experienced staff than take cuts elsewhere, that company is heading for trouble, and you don't want to be there anyways. There are better places to work at, and you can have interviews lined up before your severance expires. Yeah, it does mean you need at least a moth worth of savings, maybe even two just in case, but you should try to have that in any job. And unlike some other fields, unless you're just bad at what you do, you aren't going to be waiting for half a year for something to come up. Job security via high demand is the only one you can reliably count on, and you have that in spades if you are an experienced game developer. On top of that, salaries in the sector are competitive, so building up savings isn't generally hard so long as you have some self-control. (Special circumstances, health, etc., notwithstanding.)

Of course, what qualifies as "experienced" varies by field quite a bit. An engineer or tech art are basically job-secure as soon as they are hired to their first studio, while someone in QA or PR might have to work for a few years and ship multiple titles before they stop being considered "expendable." But then the floor for entry level is very different for these positions as well. QA is definitely something you learn by doing, and learning to do anything well takes time.

The real problem, and one that impacts people outside of game industry way worse, is that there is no decent safety net for people between jobs. Unemployment benefits suck and health insurance, even with gov't assistance when you're unemployed, is absurdly expensive. People with mortgage/rent and/or health bills might not have enough security in their savings. That is something that corporations can exploit.

If anything, game development shows us what the world can be like if we fix social safety nets that government should be responsible for. I get nearly two months of vacation every year. We have maternity and paternity leave offered. My insurance costs me almost nothing and covers best hospitals in the area. And on top of that, I have a high enough salary to afford mortgage payments and still build up good savings. Why? Because if my employer did not provide these things, somebody else would. They know that I can leave at any time and not have to be afraid to end up homeless or without medical help, and so they are forced to compete. In other fields, people have to stay with the same employer because finding alternative job can take many months. So instead of benefits and proper wage, employers offer "job security".

All of this isn't an attempt to excuse execs that have a year with record firings and top it off with record bonuses for themselves. But it's really hurting the company more than anyone else. A lot of top talent just won't even talk to recruiters from Activision or EA. I'm sure they're still getting their teams staffed, but it's costing them more, and in high profile projects, the bleed of talent is starting to show. The days when you could get top people to work for you just because you own Blizzard or BioWare are gone. And no, I don't expect the execs to get their come-uppance, they'll have their golden parachutes even if things turn sour, but other studios are starting to learn from their mistakes, so change is definitely happening.

All that said, the CDPR shenanigans have taken things to rather a new level. We'll have to see how that plays out.

[Greenfire32]

Honestly I like the Bethesda approach: Don't even announce the game until it's only a few months from release. Keeps the hype from reaching critical levels and always resulting in a disappointing experience. Having Fallout 4 get announced and released in the same year was an amazing breath of fresh air.

We don't need to talk about Fallout 76, though. That's hot hot garbage.

[The Aziz]

4 hours ago, Greenfire32 said:

Bethesda approach: Don't even announce the game until it's only a few months from release

https://youtu.be/OkFdqqyI8y4

Is it though?