Will KSP2 have lore or a storyline?

[shdwlrd]

6 hours ago, Dientus said:

I disagree. Tutorials are for hand holding, not the main game. I have no exact numbers unfortunately but everywhere I see someone saying 'its too difficult' it's because, well, it's rocket science.

Then riddle me this. Why are the devs wasting their time making tutorial videos for KSP2 then? 

Too give you the answer, even the devs think KSP is very complex/hard and you shouldn't have to leave the game to find the information on the rocket science, physics, and the 'how do I' without leaving the game.

[Dientus]

4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Too give you the answer, even the devs think KSP is very complex/hard and you shouldn't have to leave the game to find the information on the rocket science, physics, and the 'how do I' without leaving the game.

The answer is indeed in the post. The way it's presented, is as an optional view. Not something that interrupts normal game play. Playable tutorial/tutorial video... Potato potato so to speak. The devs from my take on it, are trying to prevent you from having to leave the game to learn it.

Many games do this, my point was that normal gameplay and instructional videos, playable tutorials, and get together sing-alongs would disrupt normal gameplay and break the immersion experience if they suddenly pop in while you are trying to aerobrake in Duna. Leave them back at the main menu.

[Guest]

I don't want my lego sets to come with a book or a movie, just the instruction booklet, same goes for KSP. 

A fixed lore and story would be the same as replacing the modular lego-like parts system with fixed rockets and ships.

[Bej Kerman]

13 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

14 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

hand-holding go against KSP's sandbox-and-imagination design .

And is the reason KSP why people try it and say it's too difficult. For a game as complex as KSP is, some hand-holding would be helpful for player retention.

KSP 2 is making the tutorials more than adequate, unlike in KSP 1. Your LEGO doesn't need cutscenes and hand-holding.

12 hours ago, Dientus said:

14 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

but that seems to be because you just dropped the game in front of her without explaining that it's a LEGO set,

I understand what you mean, but I think LEGOS is oversimplification of what ksp is and what ksp2 will be. Saying it's Lego and expecting them to fly interstellar with the proper amount of delta-v without an understanding of what it is goes to the other side of the spectrum.

As I've already said previously, tutorials are going to go way further with helping you than cutscenes. I want to stress that just showing someone a game spontaneously without telling them what the funk they're looking at and using their reactions to said game makes an inadequate argument for, let's say, cutscenes. Avalancha's wife probably never seen a tutorial and was probably being handheld by Avalancha without them explaining what they're doing - they get to space with a capsule, a rocket and a fuel tank and, because they've had inadequate time to adjust to the game and have never seen tutorials before, they think "What now?". It has bogall to do with cutscenes and attention spans.

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

I don't want my lego sets to come with a book or a movie, just the instruction booklet, same goes for KSP. 

A fixed lore and story would be the same as replacing the modular lego-like parts system with fixed rockets and ships.

To put my argument another way using your helpful analogy, "but my wife said "What now?" after being introduced to LEGO for the first time and building a little tower of 2x2 pieces. A book and a movie would go a long way to keeping her, and other new players who probably did a lot more research before having to spend physical money on the LEGO set, occupied". Not that Avalancha said this word-for-word, that's just how I see what they said.

[Dientus]

@Bej Kerman
agreed

Sorry, ran out of likes.

[KSK]

My 2p worth on this.

I’ve thought about it quite a lot but I’m not convinced that KSP lends itself to an in-game story - and I say this as somebody who’s written a fairly substantial KSP fanfic. With that said, I also see no reason why KSP2 couldn’t include a story mode alongside any other modes that the devs have planned.

Lore, on the other hand, I think would add a lot to the game and it doesn’t have to be particularly obtrusive. A well written set of part descriptions, for   example, would go a long way, particularly if they were combined with a similarly well written Kerbopedia.

Better yet, the current part descriptions can be edited although I personally found that to be a clunky process. On that basis, I don’t see any particular reason why KSP2 part descriptions couldn’t also be editable. Don’t like the lore supplied with the game? Just delete it, mod in some different lore or have a go at writing your own.

In short, lore doesn’t have to be a big deal, there’s no shortage of raw material on these forums to draw on, and some folks do engage with it. I know *that* much from kind feedback on my own work.

“Thank you for writing this--it give a feeling of DEPTH to the KSP experience!”

“Thank you.  For the words, for the kerbals, for the kerm, and for bringing their world to life.”

 

[Dr. Kerbal]

What about missions. Arent the missions in KSP like a story???

Edited April 2, 2021 by Dr. Kerbal

[KSK]

Not sure. What missions did you have in mind?

[Dr. Kerbal]

2 minutes ago, KSK said:

Not sure. What missions did you have in mind?

Aren't the missions in KSP like a story.

[KSK]

What, the contracts you get in Career mode, or whatever the equivalents (if any) are going to be in KSP2? At the moment - not really in my opinion.  Or at least not as I remember them but they may have changed since I last played KSP.

The way I remember them though, the missions tell you where to go, what to do when you get there and how much you'll get paid for doing it but they weren't that great at telling you why (apart from the funds or science). Take the very first 'launch your first rocket' contract for example. Why are you launching it? As the first shots in a Space Race? Because Jeb made a bet with somebody in a bar that he'd be the first kerbal in space? Because Wernher finally got fed up with the Flat Kerbin Society and decided to prove once and for all that Kerbin is actually a sphere? Or (more likely  ) some other reason altogether.

With that said - sure you could write up a set of missions that link together into a story and that's probably how you'd do it. The thing is though, KSP is a bit limited in what you can do in-game. You can build cool rockets (or other vehicles), take them places and do a little science when you get there - but not a lot else.  You can't for example (and of course not, because KSP isn't this sort of game), go to secret base X on planet Y, sneak Jeb in round the back to deactivate the security alarm, before sending Val in to steal the villain's super-secret Snacks formula. There's a limit to how much you can actually engage with an in-game story by doing things within that story. 

KSP2 might be a bit more freeform in that sense - after all we'll be able to build colonies and go interstellar and such - but from what the devs have said so far, it's still basically a game about building cool rockets.

So any in-game story will probably boil down to 'build this here and read some text' then 'take vehicle X to location Y' - and read some more text. Or watch the next cutscene or whatever.  It would certainly be possible to turn that into a really good story but it wouldn't be terribly interactive, which I think is what most folks mean when they talk about a story-driven game.

Edit:  Or we might have completely different ideas about what a KSP story would or could be! Feel free to disagree with any or all of the above.

Edited April 2, 2021 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

On 3/29/2021 at 8:43 PM, Dr. Kerbal said:

Will KSP2 have like a lore story behind the Easter eggs? Because I know sometimes other games do this so I was just curios.

"Two centuries passed since infamous Jeb Kerman accidentally pushed the carriage equipped with container full of Mystery Goo down the rails, right into the lightings flashing in the center of the test room.

A stunning burst made everyone in the R&D complex stun, and then the Resonance Cascade teared the reality, the whole Universe apart, and everything disappeared in the shining darkness around...

When Kerbal scientists woke up and had looked around, they realized that the Kerbin System, which they knew previously so close, does not exist anymore.

Yes, the Kerbin was here, and even Mun was ominously smiling in the sky, but planets...

Planets were changed.

And the whole space complex was almost destroyed, just a barn occasionally survived and was standing where the VAB should be.

Kerbals got that they should now start everything from scratch. Start it in unknown planetary system, so near, and still so far from this place.

But Kerbals did not fall in panic.

They had destroyed their KSC so many times and rebuilt it again, that there was just nothing to worry about.

The problem was that all their technologies stopped working. 
Something was wrong with this universe, with its technology. 
And the Kerbals began building "mods" again."

Edited April 2, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Lord Aurelius]

From reading the posts in here, I seem to be in the minority hoping that KSP2 does have a more story driven game mode. In KSP1, some of the early devs stated they intended to do something like that with the anomalies, and I've really enjoyed the anomaly explorer contract packs.

I don't see a story driven mode as a replacement for the current sandbox/science modes, but rather as a complement for players who enjoy a more story driven challenge, and as a stepping stone for players just coming off the tutorial to apply their skills and get mission ideas with entertaining cutscenes between challenges (the devs came up with some pretty amusing ones for announcing updates, seems like wasted opportunity to not put some in-game.

[avalancha]

 

On 4/1/2021 at 11:30 PM, Bej Kerman said:

You're arguing that LEGO would pull people in if it had extra Michael Bay and lens flare.

Uh... yes? Duh?

But in all seriousness, point well taken, dropping someone just in without help and understanding rarely leads to positive results, I agree here. However, you surely also agree that (if it's not at the cost of what we the existing playerbase currently enjoy, the sandbox etc.) "going against the original design" is forbidden or always negative for a game. If XY idea is good for a game (and yes, I think so, that's why I knew this would be an unpopular post), then it should always be allowed, no matter what the original intentions were

[Guest]

15 hours ago, avalancha said:

However, you surely also agree that (if it's not at the cost of what we the existing playerbase currently enjoy, the sandbox etc.) "going against the original design" is forbidden or always negative for a game. If XY idea is good for a game (and yes, I think so, that's why I knew this would be an unpopular post), then it should always be allowed, no matter what the original intentions were

It's not "against the original design" of KSP, KSP itself is a mesh between the management, the simulator and the sandbox genres and not having a forced story or intrusive lore (and cutscenes are the pinnacle of intrusive narrative) is basically a staple of all 3 of those genres.

Games in those genres that found space for a more important narrative usually did it at the expense of depth, replayability and complexity, that's why you find this much opposition (aside from one story being less than the hundreds off head canons the community creates).

[Starhelperdude]

I think the player should do the lore, for example

in one save from me in ksp1 Kerbin is a battlefield

in another one kerbin is a peaceful place fully oriented to spaceflight