Poll: KSP2 buying decisions

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Work for free it's absolutely misleading.

I DO NOT work for free. I work for myself. It only happens that once the work is done, I don't mind other people using it too - since it's essentially cost free for me and not rarely users help me on finding bug on the code that once fixes will benefit me too.

I do not blindly hunt bugs on the Internet to be fixed. I do what I can to fix KSP bugs because I WANNA PLAY THE GAME I BOUGHT, and if the only way of doing it is to fix myself the damned thing, so be it.

I'm not disregarding volunteers work, merely noticing that anything can be accomplished if you don't have to care about being economically viable and have enough volunteers.

The point was if it is viable or not to fix KSP codebase instead of making a sequel, my argument is that it's not, probably due to the "free everything forever" policy.

It doesn't makes much sense to reply with "I've seen volunteers accomplish bigger feats".

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

The point was if it is viable or not to fix KSP codebase instead of making a sequel, my argument is that it's not, probably due to the "free everything forever" policy.

The "free everything forever" is a problem only because KSP failed on expanding the userbase beyound the initial sell, as it appears.

IMHO opinion, they failed on expanding the userbase beyound the inicial early adopters exactly due the lack of compromise on fixing bugs at first place. It worths to mention that is more or less consensus that KSP 1.3.1 was functional and good enough, what implies that KSP started to go downhills on KSP 1.4.0 and after - KSP 1.4.0 was a huge change, they migrated from Unity 5 to Unity 2017 and a lot of things had to be rewritten. This rewrite appears to be the the beginning of the race to the bottom.

So, nope. The "free forever policy" is not the source of the problems here. It's the symptom.

Spoiler

That said, one may wonder if everything was badly made from KSP 1.4.0 to today. My opinion is that NOT - there're a lot of interesting features added, a lot of enhancements, there was value being added. The problem is that all that added value is buried under a mountain of technical debts - and this is the reason IMHO things gone trough the tubes on KSP 1 .

Source: https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/tech-debt/

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Lisias
Added illustrative comics.

[luplay2]

No doubt to buy it.

[Jacke]

On 5/9/2022 at 12:10 PM, Master39 said:

If you find the people to work for free you can fix anything, that goes without saying.

Besides what @Lisias said, you need a competent volunteer team with many skills at a quality level that can make up a good team.  That sort of team isn't easy to recruit nor maintain, because besides all the other requirements, they have to work in their spare time and still enjoy life.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Jacke

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jacke said:

Besides what @Lisias said, you need a competent volunteer team with many skills at a quality level that can make up a good team.  That sort of team isn't easy to recruit nor maintain, because besides all the other requirements, they have to work in their spare time and still enjoy life.

Yes, I know, I saw more than one community project.

But the point here remains, it's not that is impossible to fix KSP code, it's not a technical impossibility, just a matter of economical viability.

[Gargamel]

On 5/9/2022 at 10:40 AM, Lisias said:

The "free everything forever" is a problem only because KSP failed on expanding the userbase beyound the initial sell, as it appears.

Let me get this straight.    You are saying that KSP has almost zero sales after March 2013, when they chose to list it on the world’s largest games retailer, whereas previously they had zero marketing and the game was purely word of mouth.    And then due to the near zero sales after release, because the player base already had the game, they decided it would be worthwhile to release a DLC, and then a follow up DLC, neither of which would generate any significant revenue since the majority of the player base was “free for life”, and then one of the world’s largest game publishers decided it would be a good idea to acquire the title and release a sequel based on no sales after 2013.   I’m just stating this for clarification of your position before I respond.  

Edited May 12, 2022 by Gargamel

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

Let me get this straight.    You are saying that KSP has almost zero sales after March 2013, when they chose to list it on the world’s largest games retailer, whereas previously they had zero marketing and the game was purely word of mouth. 

Nope. Someone else is, please read the whole sequence of replies.

 

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

I’m just stating this for clarification of your position before I respond.  

I suggest you read a bit more before doing it.

[Gargamel]

13 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Nope. Someone else is, please read the whole sequence of replies.

Well, then I’m not sure how else to interpret your post:

On 5/9/2022 at 10:40 AM, Lisias said:

On 5/9/2022 at 9:40 AM, Master39 said:

 

The "free everything forever" is a problem only because KSP failed on expanding the userbase beyound the initial sell, as it appears.

Please explain. 

[Lisias]

55 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Well, then I’m not sure how else to interpret your post:

Please explain. 

Here, I fixed the quotes for you:

On 5/9/2022 at 10:40 AM, Master39 said:

The point was if it is viable or not to fix KSP codebase instead of making a sequel, my argument is that it's not, probably due to the "free everything forever" policy.

From where I replied:

On 5/9/2022 at 11:40 AM, Lisias said:

The "free everything forever" is a problem only because KSP failed on expanding the userbase beyound the initial sell, as it appears.

And I want to emphasise: "as it appears".

The whole argument is KSP not being economically viable to fix. One of the possible explanations is the "free everything forever" policy. I assumed his assessment of the situation as valid, and argued that if the "free everything forever" policy is a problem, is because KSP failed to expand the user base to a level in which would be profitable to fix KSP bugs.

I want to emphasise (and I ask you to pay special attention on this) that an userbase is not the collection of every single guy that ever bought the game, but the collection of people that are using the game and willing to spend money on it.

In 2015/May there was an average of 7,399.9 (yeah, dot nine user  ) playing KSP on Steam, and the month had a peak of 19,079 simultaneous players.

In last April, the average was 3,307.7 and the peak was 5,512 simultaneous users.

I hope I don't have to explain you how this is not exactly a growing user base (besides the April numbers not being exactly bad - there're more expensive games around with way less playing users on Steam).

Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/220200

— — IN TIME — — 

Quote

Steam is the world's largest distributor of PC games, taking up 75% of the global market share. 50 -70% of the world's PC game downloads take place on Steam. Steam released 8,290 games in 2019, the most it has released in one year ever since its inception.

Source: https://comparecamp.com/steam-statistics/

So Steam Charts is an excellent metric to infer the current size of a game's userbase. 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Lisias
in time

[t_v]

My two cents about this: if the user base is being defined by active players, but we have just established that KSP makes nearly no money from active play, just one-time purchases, why are we using the active player counts as a metric? We should rather look at the rate the people are buying the game and DLC and at what discounts to see the sustainability of the development. 

[Vl3d]

 

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, Lisias said:

So Steam Charts is an excellent metric to infer the current size of a game's userbase

Except when a player realizes they can play KSP without using Steam. I haven't used Steam to launch KSP since 2016. So there some players not being accounted for. I would take those numbers as the lowest possible number.

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, t_v said:

My two cents about this: if the user base is being defined by active players <cut by me>

Estimated, not defined. Without telemetry, it's pretty hard to infer the real numbers.

But the the numbers on Steam drops, it's reasonable to conclude the same is happening to off-line users too.]

 

2 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Except when a player realizes they can play KSP without using Steam. <cut by me>

See above.

[t_v]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

I would take those numbers as the lowest possible number.

Here, I would say that Steam is a pretty good estimate of changes in active users. If you assume that a certain percentage of KSP activity is due to Steam, then the Steam usage will be proportional to the total usage, give or take a few random fluctuations. 

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Estimated, not defined. Without telemetry, it's pretty hard to infer the real numbers.

But the the numbers on Steam drops, it's reasonable to conclude the same is happening to off-line users too.]

I take no problem with this estimation, just with the choice of using this metric to make an argument about game development sustainability. If the business model relies on sales instead of continual play, then looking at continual play is not a good way to look at what sort of income activity is going on. Put another way, I could use the concurrent users metric as a proxy for income in a live service game, but not for a game like KSP. 

[Lisias]

On 5/12/2022 at 3:46 PM, t_v said:

Put another way, I could use the concurrent users metric as a proxy for income in a live service game, but not for a game like KSP. 

I think that the peak players can be used (with some grain of salt) to estimate that.

Once you buy a game, you spend some time on it immediately, If you like the game, you keep playing it - otherwise, you try a refund or just leave it alone on your inventory and forget about (not unusual when you get the game for cheap).

It's worth to mention that crossing the peak players timeline with the discount sales one, the peak players usually raises a bit on the sales - suggesting that there's a correlation between these numbers. Interesting enough, the average players usually dropped after these sales on KSP releases that were perceived as bad by the Community,

Ok, we need to keep in mind that Correlation is not Causation. But for our purposes here, it's good enough.

On a side note, these numbers doesn't reflect my own opinions about the subject. These numbers I mentioned above implies that KSP 1.4.x series were "terrible" - but I play 1.4.3 until nowadays (it's one of my favorites), and most of my long term gaming was done on 1.4.5 and I really enjoyed it (once the most immediate problems were fixed or worked around) .

And, additionally,  all these metrics by themselves are pretty bleak. Usually we get way better insights about the "health" of the game by comparing it with other games where the market share are known (or with better estimations).

Crossing the KSP timelines with games like Flight Simulator 2020 is interesting, as well Hollow Knight. One of them is promoted as online, the other is completely offline.

https://steamcharts.com/app/367520

https://steamcharts.com/app/1250410

https://steamcharts.com/app/220200

It helps to try to make sense of the numbers, perhaps mitigating a bit your objections.

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Lisias
Grammars. Don't you hate this thing?

[A Generic Kerbal]

I will pre-order the game as soon as it's an option, but I still have to figure out how. My country's been cut from Swift and take two games aren't available in my region (in Steam)

[pss88]

4 hours ago, A Generic Kerbal said:

I will pre-order the game as soon as it's an option, but I still have to figure out how. My country's been cut from Swift and take two games aren't available in my region (in Steam)

Yeah, I'm in the same boat... Although there are web-sites selling cd-keys and accepting Yandex/Qiwi payments. But it's not gonna be cheap.

[Sesshaku]

What maximum price should the game have?

• $60+
  
  ¿60% voted for that one? Good lord, thank god for regional prices, you guys have no care for third world buyers.

[shdwlrd]

16 minutes ago, Sesshaku said:

What maximum price should the game have?

• $60+
  
  ¿60% voted for that one? Good lord, thank god for regional prices, you guys have no care for third world buyers.

That's the problem with developing a game in one of the more expensive areas to operate in, and one of more expensive countries to live in. 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Sesshaku said:

you guys have no care for third world buyers.

Or, maybe, people knows about regional pricing.

 

[Axelord FTW]

I'd pay full 'AAA pricing' thought I'd honestly prefer to pay less.

Buy, never pre-order. NEVER. PRE-ORDER! I don't care if they're upselling you [snip], pre-ordering anything is dumb.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Starhawk
Redacted by moderator

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Axelord FTW said:

Buy, never pre-order. NEVER. PRE-ORDER! I don't care if they're upselling you [snip], pre-ordering anything is dumb.

Preorder also means preloading a day earlier while still being able to refund the game if needed.

It doesn't necessarily mean one I buying the ultra mega delux collector edition 2 years before release.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Starhawk
Redacted by moderator

[Catto]

I'd preorder it. My birthday is in less than two months, i hope it's preorderable after or before then. I want to play it on DAY ONE.

[Cyne]

Honestly I'd preorder it, it's not like I'm lacking the money and I've been waiting for this game since the morning I woke up checked youtube notifications and saw that KSP2 trailer back in 2019. I'd be happy as long as I get a semi-working game. Not saying I want a game that half works, but after suffering through KSP1 my standards are already set low enough that I'd be happy lmao

[LHACK4142]

What reason is there to preorder anything?