Release Date Update from the KSP2 Team

[RayneCloud]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Respect to you sir. Please allow me to ask for your opinion:

How do you think

1) the lack of transparency regarding key architectural features of the game (like multiplayer)

2) the lack of investment towards community growth

3) going month(s) without news about the game and the lack of gameplay videos

reflects on Private Division's Communication and Marketing department?

Also, if the game launches in early 2023, when can we expect the much anticipated reveal of the game feature set? Because most of us have no idea what type of game KSP2 will be and I personally believe it will and should be persistent world massively multiplayer.

1. I am not a Sir, it's litreally in my signature. 
2. I have no comment on their communication and marketing strategy at the moment. 
3. I do not work for PD or Intercept so I would be entirely unable to answer any questions like this.

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by RayneCloud

[joratto]

15 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP isn't being developed by the Cyberpunk devs though. You can't say they're in similar situations.

I’m certainly hopeful but this isn’t a very good argument. People said “CDPR made Witcher 3! How could they go wrong?!”. Star theory doesn’t even have an analogous track record we can look at.

[Vl3d]

29 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

1. I am not a Sir, it's litreally in my signature. 

Apologies, I believe the signature is not visible at the end of your comments.

[MechBFP]

16 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Apologies, I believe the signature is not visible at the end of your comments.

FYI signatures don’t appear when using the mobile version of the forums, they do on the desktop version though. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by MechBFP

[RayneCloud]

Just now, MechBFP said:

FYI signatures don’t appear when using the mobile version of the forums.m, they do on the desktop version though. 

Good to know. Thank you.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

1) the lack of transparency regarding key architectural features of the game (like multiplayer)

2) the lack of investment towards community growth

3) going month(s) without news about the game and the lack of gameplay videos

I just don’t think any of these things are that unusual nearly a year out from release. You probably won’t get specifics on multiplayer or colonization or tech progression for several more months. KSP already has a pretty devoted core following and its kind of a waste of time and resources to gin everyone up this far out. As has been pointed out we’ve gotten way more information and feedback about KSP2 than much bigger games like Starfield and Elden ring at similar stages. It doesn’t say anything negative about the PR team at all. The dev blogs and dev videos and occasional show and tells are great. The default is to just keep the powder dry until a month or 3 before release, so anything we get now is gravy. 
 

As far as multiplayer goes we’ll just have to see. I think it could be a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t pin all your hopes on it being exactly what you want.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Snark]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

FYI signatures don’t appear when using the mobile version of the forums, they do on the desktop version though. 

(And not even on the desktop version, if the user has picked the option not to display them-- which a fair number of folks do, in order to conserve screen real estate.)

[Catto]

10 hours ago, starcaptain said:

I too am in support of the "as long as it takes" timeline.

Fine. I'll go to space.

[darthgently]

11 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

No.

smh. Good luck with that

[Dman979]

Hey all, I removed a few posts for getting too far off the topic. Could we get back to discussing the decision to change the release date?

[PDCWolf]

[snip]

11 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I just don’t think any of these things are that unusual nearly a year out from release.

~3 years from release date 1, ~2 years from release date 2, ~1 year from release date 3. 

11 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

As has been pointed out we’ve gotten way more information and feedback about KSP2 than much bigger games like Starfield and Elden ring at similar stages.

This was made in very bad faith, and I'm really sad it's caught on as an argument. Starfield, Elden Ring, etc, come from companies that have decades in the business pumping out game after game on multiple franchises. Sure, a lot of them might be not good games, and one of those companies certainly has built up a reputation (or already had it if you didn't fall for the skyrim fad). KSP2 comes from one of the worse publishers out there in terms of how they treat their products and community, and KSP2 itself is being developed by a studio formed by poaching, boat jumpers, and what remains of the original people that rushed KSP1 to release just to "prove people wrong" that the game wasn't green.

8 hours ago, darthgently said:

smh. Good luck with that

This is like the first comment I quoted but worse, you decided to completely ignore the counter argument, the concerns, and the evidence. 

The fact that they've already broken promises (other than the release date, you can completely ignore that) is real, that's why the people who've really been paying attention to what's going on have actual concerns and not just blind praise and eternal patience. You might feel like ignoring all of what's happened, other people do not. Further on, their PR/CM keep completely failing to address these concerns, which only makes said concerns grow. 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Vanamonde

[darthgently]

8 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

you decided to completely ignore the counter argument, the concerns, and the evidence

You are correct.  I did decide to do that.  Because I've read them many, many, many times.  And still find it a weak argument no matter how ferociously repeated.  Sorry

[t_v]

34 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

The fact that they've already broken promises (other than the release date, you can completely ignore that) is real, that's why the people who've really been paying attention to what's going on have actual concerns and not just blind praise and eternal patience. You might feel like ignoring all of what's happened, other people do not. Further on, their PR/CM keep completely failing to address these concerns, which only makes said concerns grow. 

Ok, so first, I’m interested in seeing what promises they have broken, and who you consider as breaking promises. Because we have seen that Squad has broken some promises, and T2 has broken promises, but has anybody on the current KSP 2 team previously broken promises beyond something tangential like biweekly updates? Not counting the developers  who transferred from Squad - I don’t think the devs intended to break the promises that were made around multiplayer or other stuff. 
 

Secondly, the impact of responses needs to be looked at. (This is in reply to the “blind praise and eternal patience”). People are not ignoring the past, they are simply interpreting it differently from you. While you may see a delay as an indication of a problem in the studio, others see it as a natural part of game development. Additionally, it is not blind to praise a developer studio for their achievements even if they do have problems (which remember, is still under debate). People can be happy that the devs are making progress (and I wager that you are too), and they can choose to express that happiness instead of expressing their dismay at another delay. It is a difference in how you choose to respond to your outwards situation. And everyone has “eternal patience” because everybody is going to have to wait until the game is released, whether they like it or not. You might as well choose to change how you feel about such things and have a better time in these next nine months.

Concerns are perfectly valid - but consider when your interpretation of events is not the only plausible one. What I see a lot of people saying is that we simply don’t know what is going on, and making (reasonable) inferences will not lead to anything and for some, it casts too much of a negative light on an unknown situation. As always, we will see soon enough what the situation is, whenever the game comes out or gets canceled or whatever else happens. Let’s just enjoy the time up until then, because we have already seen that plaintive requests for a change in company strategy is met only by the NDAs that the devs probably had to sign. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by t_v

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

. Further on, their PR/CM keep completely failing to address these concerns, which only makes said concerns grow. 

I don't think they've grown so much as two or three of you just repeat the same arguments over and over again. We have indeed answered in good faith, offered completely reasonable and obvious explanations, you just don't agree. I still don't entirely understand why you're so disgruntled about all this or why you seem to take any of this personally, but thats okay. You're completely entitled to your opinion. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Deddly]

Guys, guys, you've forgotten how it works. This is the proper procedure:

1) Developers tell the users details of some feature they are planning to work on. 

2) Some users get excited, others fly into a rage because they don't want that feature, and its very suggestion is robbing developer time from other things that are absolutely objectively far more important. 

3) Developers realise that the feature isn't going to work as planned for some reason and the plans change. 

4) Some users: "You lied to us!" 

5) Developers are more careful about their communications moving forward. 

6) Some users: "You haven't told us anything in weeks, you're deliberately hiding bad news otherwise you would have said something by now!" 

7)  Developers: "Here's an update" 

8) Some users: "That's not good enough, we were expecting you show that other thing!" 

9) Developers "Here's another update."

10) Some users: "OMG YOU STILL DIDN'T SHOW THE THING! You must be lying to us again because you did that before so it is an unequivocal fact that you are liars and the only conclusion is that you have cancelled the thing I was most looking forward to, which means we, the community, were all looking forward to it." 

11) Developers: "Here's another update, and it's pre-alpha, which means it's actually in-game footage!" 

12) Some users: "Pre-alpha?? You've barely even started the game! I don't know what pre-alpha means but it sure sounds like you haven't done anything at all, because "alpha" is a recognised industry-wide concept that means "awful piece of junk that isn't ready for release" and "pre" means before even that. AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE THING! You are clearly deliberately avoiding the issue because I know for a fact that you read all my messages, so you are just lying again. We demand the thing, and we demand that you report your progress to us (especially about the thing) on a regular basis, otherwise we will refuse to stop demanding these things! What's more, we refuse to pre-order the game until such time as a pre-order system is set up, and if you don't tell us about the thing, we won't buy the game until it's RELEASED! That'll teach ya."

Edited October 3, 2022 by Deddly

[shdwlrd]

1 hour ago, Deddly said:

Guys, guys, you've forgotten how it works. This is the proper procedure:

1) Developers tell the users details of some feature they are planning to work on. 

2) Some users get excited, others fly into a rage because they don't want that feature, and its very suggestion is robbing developer time from other things that are absolutely objectively far more important. 

3) Developers realise that the feature isn't going to work as planned for some reason and the plans change. 

4) Some users: "You lied to us!" 

5) Developers are more careful about their communications moving forward. 

6) Some users: "You haven't told us anything in weeks, you're deliberately hiding bad news otherwise you would have said something by now!" 

7)  Developers: "Here's an update" 

8) Some users: "That's not good enough, we were expecting you show that other thing!" 

9) Developers "Here's another update."

10) Some users: "OMG YOU STILL DIDN'T SHOW THE THING! You must be lying to us again because you did that before so it is an unequivocal fact that you are liars and the only conclusion is that you have cancelled the thing I was most looking forward to, which means we, the community, were all looking forward to it." 

11) Developers: "Here's another update, and it's pre-alpha, which means it's actually in-game footage!" 

12) Some users: "Pre-alpha?? You've barely even started the game! I don't know what pre-alpha means but it sure sounds like you haven't done anything at all, because "alpha" is a recognised industry-wide concept that means "awful piece of junk that isn't ready for release" and "pre" means before even that. AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE THING! You are clearly deliberately avoiding the issue because I know for a fact that you read all my messages, so you are just lying again. We demand the thing, and we demand that you report your progress to us (especially about the thing) on a regulator basis, otherwise we will refuse to stop demanding these things! What's more, we refuse to pre-order the game until such time as a pre-order system is set up, and if you don't tell us about the thing, we won't buy the game until it's RELEASED! That'll teach ya."

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. KSP1 development was like that, and KSP2 is so much of the same. 

[MechBFP]

19 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. KSP1 development was like that, and KSP2 is so much of the same. 

All game development for at least the last 20 years has been like that. 

[shdwlrd]

24 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

All game development for at least the last 20 years has been like that. 

I'll take your word. KSP is the only game where I've followed the development closely enough to see it.

[RayneCloud]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

Guys, guys, you've forgotten how it works. This is the proper procedure:

1) Developers tell the users details of some feature they are planning to work on. 

2) Some users get excited, others fly into a rage because they don't want that feature, and its very suggestion is robbing developer time from other things that are absolutely objectively far more important. 

3) Developers realise that the feature isn't going to work as planned for some reason and the plans change. 

4) Some users: "You lied to us!" 

5) Developers are more careful about their communications moving forward. 

6) Some users: "You haven't told us anything in weeks, you're deliberately hiding bad news otherwise you would have said something by now!" 

7)  Developers: "Here's an update" 

8) Some users: "That's not good enough, we were expecting you show that other thing!" 

9) Developers "Here's another update."

10) Some users: "OMG YOU STILL DIDN'T SHOW THE THING! You must be lying to us again because you did that before so it is an unequivocal fact that you are liars and the only conclusion is that you have cancelled the thing I was most looking forward to, which means we, the community, were all looking forward to it." 

11) Developers: "Here's another update, and it's pre-alpha, which means it's actually in-game footage!" 

12) Some users: "Pre-alpha?? You've barely even started the game! I don't know what pre-alpha means but it sure sounds like you haven't done anything at all, because "alpha" is a recognised industry-wide concept that means "awful piece of junk that isn't ready for release" and "pre" means before even that. AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE THING! You are clearly deliberately avoiding the issue because I know for a fact that you read all my messages, so you are just lying again. We demand the thing, and we demand that you report your progress to us (especially about the thing) on a regulator basis, otherwise we will refuse to stop demanding these things! What's more, we refuse to pre-order the game until such time as a pre-order system is set up, and if you don't tell us about the thing, we won't buy the game until it's RELEASED! That'll teach ya."

Literally all of this. For all 4 games I've worked on. All of it. 100% accurate. 

[PDCWolf]

3 hours ago, t_v said:

Ok, so first, I’m interested in seeing what promises they have broken, and who you consider as breaking promises. Because we have seen that Squad has broken some promises, and T2 has broken promises, but has anybody on the current KSP 2 team previously broken promises beyond something tangential like biweekly updates? Not counting the developers  who transferred from Squad - I don’t think the devs intended to break the promises that were made around multiplayer or other stuff. 

Secondly, the impact of responses needs to be looked at. (This is in reply to the “blind praise and eternal patience”). People are not ignoring the past, they are simply interpreting it differently from you. While you may see a delay as an indication of a problem in the studio, others see it as a natural part of game development. Additionally, it is not blind to praise a developer studio for their achievements even if they do have problems (which remember, is still under debate). People can be happy that the devs are making progress (and I wager that you are too), and they can choose to express that happiness instead of expressing their dismay at another delay. It is a difference in how you choose to respond to your outwards situation. And everyone has “eternal patience” because everybody is going to have to wait until the game is released, whether they like it or not. You might as well choose to change how you feel about such things and have a better time in these next nine months.

Concerns are perfectly valid - but consider when your interpretation of events is not the only plausible one. What I see a lot of people saying is that we simply don’t know what is going on, and making (reasonable) inferences will not lead to anything and for some, it casts too much of a negative light on an unknown situation. As always, we will see soon enough what the situation is, whenever the game comes out or gets canceled or whatever else happens. Let’s just enjoy the time up until then, because we have already seen that plaintive requests for a change in company strategy is met only by the NDAs that the devs probably had to sign. 

 

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I don't think they've grown so much as two or three of you just repeat the same arguments over and over again. We have indeed answered in good faith, offered completely reasonable and obvious explanations, you just don't agree. I still don't entirely understand why you're so disgruntled about all this or why you seem to take any of this personally, but thats okay. You're completely entitled to your opinion. 

I'm gonna group these two comments in a single answer: I feel you can't say "ok you're doing great" to these type of news without consciously deciding to overlook the bad stuff, this is why I call it "blind praise", you're literally closing your eyes and typing something positive. Not only do those kind of comments bring absolutely nothing of value to a discussion (this is a forum, we're here to discuss stuff), but at this point you've gotta overlook so much stuff to just say something like that that we can't just agree it is "interpreting facts in a different way".

We can discuss how much we know about what could be going on, we can discuss their track record as publishers, developers, etc. We can discuss a lot of stuff around this, because the more this crap happens, the more of it piles up to discuss, and the tighter you need to make your field of view to overlook it. However, we're in the official forums, this is the specific place to overlook the bad and just blindly praise, to the point where saying "concerns are not growing" when you keep your eyes in here is outright disingenuous. Every single piece of KSP2 news brings more and more negative comments on the subreddit, steam discussions, and other places, and yes, 2 or 3 people in the congregation of blind praisers.

As for "People can be happy that the devs are making progress", they need to show that progress first before we can talk about progress, otherwise we go back to blind praise.

 

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

Guys, guys, you've forgotten how it works. This is the proper procedure:

1) Developers tell the users details of some feature they are planning to work on. 

2) Some users get excited, others fly into a rage because they don't want that feature, and its very suggestion is robbing developer time from other things that are absolutely objectively far more important. 

3) Developers realise that the feature isn't going to work as planned for some reason and the plans change. 

4) Some users: "You lied to us!" 

5) Developers are more careful about their communications moving forward. 

6) Some users: "You haven't told us anything in weeks, you're deliberately hiding bad news otherwise you would have said something by now!" 

7)  Developers: "Here's an update" 

8) Some users: "That's not good enough, we were expecting you show that other thing!" 

9) Developers "Here's another update."

10) Some users: "OMG YOU STILL DIDN'T SHOW THE THING! You must be lying to us again because you did that before so it is an unequivocal fact that you are liars and the only conclusion is that you have cancelled the thing I was most looking forward to, which means we, the community, were all looking forward to it." 

11) Developers: "Here's another update, and it's pre-alpha, which means it's actually in-game footage!" 

12) Some users: "Pre-alpha?? You've barely even started the game! I don't know what pre-alpha means but it sure sounds like you haven't done anything at all, because "alpha" is a recognised industry-wide concept that means "awful piece of junk that isn't ready for release" and "pre" means before even that. AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION THE THING! You are clearly deliberately avoiding the issue because I know for a fact that you read all my messages, so you are just lying again. We demand the thing, and we demand that you report your progress to us (especially about the thing) on a regulator basis, otherwise we will refuse to stop demanding these things! What's more, we refuse to pre-order the game until such time as a pre-order system is set up, and if you don't tell us about the thing, we won't buy the game until it's RELEASED! That'll teach ya."

Since you like lists:

1. Meeting accusations of lying with silence only rises culpability. This is true since one reaches its 5th birthday, and for anything from breaking a plate to a police interrogation.
2. Being out of touch with your fans is a thing, specially on a formed and very specific franchise such as KSP. Multiplayer for example has been massively asked for, then promised, and now demanded since it's been promised. Back in the day they tried to hide behind "people not wanting resources" using fake stats (google hits for "ksp resources" proved wrong by people posting "ksp kethane" metrics, among other stuff), obviously they had to backpedal and now we have ISRU in game.
3. You know full well the complete extent of what you release to the public. If the outrage is about A and you release information about B, you're damn well gonna get a deserved mention of A all over the place, to the point of whatever new you brought to the table about B being completely drowned out.
4. Last point is just you thinking everyone is ignorant of how gamedev works, something a lot of people like to do, even in this thread alone. People were right to call out early footage not being a pre-alpha, and some of it not even being real gameplay, and thus once again we had another huge backpedal on footage subjects (no more "pre-alpha" gameplay, just mounted scenes to render assets) and a nice warning of "not real gameplay" on some footage with included motion.

That list sounds like the publisher needs to get new PR people onboard, somebody that knows what they're doing.

[AnFa]

Can I get this image without text? Would make a great wallpaper

[Gargamel]

Just now, AnFa said:

Can I get this image without text? Would make a great wallpaper

What image?

[AnFa]

Just now, Gargamel said:

What image?

Oh, sorry. I thought it was added here too. It's the one the community manager used to open the thread in Reddit. This one:

[Gargamel]

Yes, iirc that’s an image from an earlier dev blog or such from earlier on. 

[Vanamonde]

Some comment removed. Keep it polite.