First impression from Scott Manley's gameplay video.

[GoldForest]

Just now, Tweeker said:

 

 

LOL. 

Niche Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster :

Quote

"d : a specialized market"

From Google:

Quote

adjective

denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population.

 

4 million players out of steam's 120 million? I would call that niche.

KSP being a space sim when there's under 10 total space sim games? Niche. 

You laugh, but the facts speak for themselves. KSP is niche. 

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Tweeker said:

At least one other person heard it, @ 6:08

No.

He called it a "Squeaky kid" something nobody disagrees with.

Not a "condescending brat talking down on the player"

[RocketBoy1641]

9 hours ago, Tweeker said:

Full disclosure upfront,  I had already made up my mind to pass on KSP. 

.

I just finished watching Scott Manley's gameplay video and I have a few thoughts. First and foremost, that tutorial is hideous. It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me.  Even if I didn't have 10 years of KSP under my belt, and this was my first foray into rocket building that tutorial would be a huge turn-off. What ever happened to adult people explaining  thing in adult ways?    Why not get someone like Scott Manley to do the tutorial? What were they thinking? Do they even know their audience? 

Secondly, I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Why are they charging full price for an unfinished game? Either finish it, or charge a price more appropriate to an early access game. 

 

1. They want kids to play too; so they include things in a kid friendly way.  STEM matters!

2. So they don't nickel and dine you with every pre-FULL_RELEASE addition.  And as Scott said.... if you don't want to pay up front, you *can* wait till full release.

[RocketBoy1641]

1 hour ago, Tweeker said:

4 million copies sold is hardly niche. 

 

Ya.  It is.  Guessing you don't know a ton about mainstream gaming market.  But hey, it is your opinion.  Just don't troll the thread for our benifit.  Plenty of people have said a lot of solid stuff to counter your argument.  If you don't like it; that is fine....just don't believe that we have to not like it just because you believe we shouldn't.

Edited February 21, 2023 by RocketBoy1641

[kerbiloid]

The tutorial is not ABOUT the Kerbals.
It's a part of the authentic real training course FOR them, right from the KSC Asronaut Complex.

Look at their intellectual faces. Would you really try to explain to them something in more complicated words?

[MechBFP]

The fact that you made your own thread instead of posting this in the dozen of existing one already answers the question I was going to ask. 

[kerbiloid]

Btw, why is the Kerbal from the video levitating at several inches from the Minmus ice? To avoid a collider conflict?

Such gap between the ice and the boots when it's running.

Edited February 21, 2023 by kerbiloid

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Btw, why is the Kerbal from the video levitating at several inches from the Minmus ice? To avoid a collider conflict?

Such gap between the ice and the boots when it's running.

The collider glitch was notable in a lot of videos. Some pointed it out. One youtuber even mentioned his wheels clipping through the ground when he rolled his rover. 

[Rocket Farmer]

6 hours ago, cfds said:

KSP is a sandbox. The 1500 hours were YOUR effort, not Squad's. The price is for the effort that the company put into the game. The $10 that KSP costs most of the time on Steam is a fair appreciation of Squads effort.

Also keep in mind that you pay the $50 for the game that you see exactly now. The publisher could stop the development next week without any legal repercussions. You get no right to any completed game whatsoever.

Lol.  Except you miss the part where they built the entire sandbox without which your “effort at entertainment” wouldn’t be possible.

You spend $10/hour to go to a movie.  By comparison if you get at least 5 hours out of a new Kerbal sandbox then you get at least that much utility.

In fact it’s almost impossible that you could possibly find cheaper entertainment.  We both know with the existing sandbox you can easily spend 100-200 hours plus with all the mods that will be released you could stay entertained for a very long time.  All for $50 plus their promise to deliver more.

It boggles the mind at how cheap people get.

[tstein]

14 hours ago, Tweeker said:

Full disclosure upfront,  I had already made up my mind to pass on KSP. 

.

I just finished watching Scott Manley's gameplay video and I have a few thoughts. First and foremost, that tutorial is hideous. It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me.  Even if I didn't have 10 years of KSP under my belt, and this was my first foray into rocket building that tutorial would be a huge turn-off. What ever happened to adult people explaining  thing in adult ways?    Why not get someone like Scott Manley to do the tutorial? What were they thinking? Do they even know their audience? 

Secondly, I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Why are they charging full price for an unfinished game? Either finish it, or charge a price more appropriate to an early access game. 

 

Never overestimate the mental capabilities of gamers.. the public is  vastly varied. I dare to say most gamers do not even KNOW what an  ORBIT is. Their audience is NOT us that are here in the forum. The audience is the max area under the curve of  potential clients that can  buy the game.

[SoulCandy]

Perhaps there may come a time when there are tutorials for varying age groups, but if I were a developer, I would agree w/ the game's decision to appeal to a younger audience w/ this current set of tutorials. KSP 2 has the potential to open up thousands of young children to rocket science, space, engineering, etc, and if you're only given one opportunity to create a tutorial, you'll either end up causing one group to feel dumb or another group to dumbed-down to. Personally, this has zero impact on my interest in the game either way, but that's just my two cents. 

[tstein]

6 hours ago, Turbo Ben said:

I would say too early. I suspect it's only being released now because T2 promised it's investors it would be released this financial year.

Most people don't even have the necessary hardware. The previews were done with a 7900X and a 4080, and it was still having performance issues.

It should be $30 in it's current state. Increase the price by $10 at every feature update.

That is my only real concern right now.  I am not worried on the lack of features, I expected that in an early access, as well as bugs. .. but for what we have seen the performance is lacking a lot with  high end machines (and my machine is not high end anymore, but I do play games more complex without a problem.. and can even run the cardiac surgery simulation tool that my company develops, so I do know what a well develop code can do) . I might be forced to continue my embargo on any game made with unity (seriously  they all have far worse performance than almost any other game  and I have more than 300 games in my steam).. that said I will wait a bit and see it things develop    during early access... after all that is what early access is for.

[MarcAbaddon]

Just now, SoulCandy said:

Perhaps there may come a time when there are tutorials for varying age groups, but if I were a developer, I would agree w/ the game's decision to appeal to a younger audience w/ this current set of tutorials. KSP 2 has the potential to open up thousands of young children to rocket science, space, engineering, etc, and if you're only given one opportunity to create a tutorial, you'll either end up causing one group to feel dumb or another group to dumbed-down to. Personally, this has zero impact on my interest in the game either way, but that's just my two cents. 

I am not that impacted in my interested either, but I think there's a definite risk to this approach. While it may work for really young kids, once kids are 12 or so  a lot of them are trying to act all mature and cool. At that point it may turn them off more than it would an adult.

[Kerbart]

14 hours ago, Tweeker said:

I just finished watching Scott Manley's gameplay video and I have a few thoughts. First and foremost, that tutorial is hideous. It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me.  Even if I didn't have 10 years of KSP under my belt, and this was my first foray into rocket building that tutorial would be a huge turn-off. What ever happened to adult people explaining  thing in adult ways?    Why not get someone like Scott Manley to do the tutorial? What were they thinking?

There are many thinks Intercept didn't do optimally with the EA launch. But the tutorials are something they, as far as I can tell,  nailed.

• Onboarding is a huge issue. It may not seem that way because practically everyone on this forum knows how to get ihto orbit, but not everyone who tries the game does. And while resources may seem ubiquitous, chasing them down is an extra step not every player makes. So to put emphasis on it inside the game addresses one of the big issues the game has.
• Explaining things "in an adult way" raises the barrier to entry. Explaining things as if you're a child, especially when you are a child, lowers it. It's like Joel Spolsky's famous example of Oxo utensils. By making it better accessible to a special group, you make it accessible to everyone; Oxo sells more kitchen utensils to healthy customers than to those with arthritis.
• Yes, Scott Manley is great. He's also talking to an audience that has a big interest in space and who are not intimidated by numbers. Scott Manley is geat for people like you and me. But... we already play KSP. The tutorial is intended for those who are not.

14 hours ago, Tweeker said:

Do they even know their audience? (...)

Of all the things to doubt Intercept on, I wouldn't doubt them on this. It's not "us," we already play the game and don't need  tutorials. One of the things the game is trying to do is bring STEM subjects to people who don't consider themselves nerds. Get middle-schoolers interested in math and physics (because they want to) by playing the game. So tutorials need to be easy to understand, even if you're not that well versed in physics, and fun (potentially to be used in a classroom).

I love Scott Manley. Without him I would probably have quit the 0.18 demo and never bought the game. But if I had the lofty goal of drumming up interest in science, physics, and space for groups of underrepresented schoolers (girls and minorities), then my thoughts would be "He's a great choice, but a male, white, middle aged dude is not the role model we're looking for." That's something they had to take into account. Scott Manley would have been the easy thing to do. "But we do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

Edited February 21, 2023 by Kerbart

[Pthigrivi]

I don't know I think the tutorials are great. They're not for grumpy middle age veterans of KSP1 like us, they're there to onboard new players, many of them kids. If they can explain this stuff for kids then they can explain them to anyone. The ones we've seen have been pretty effective at describing complicated ideas in a really easy to understand way. 

As to the price I think given everything we'll be getting over the next year or two from colonies to interstellar and multiplayer $50 is a steal. But yknow the EA scene isn't for everyone so I think players should just join in when they're comfortable. 

Edited February 21, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[cfds]

4 hours ago, Rocket Farmer said:

Lol.  Except you miss the part where they built the entire sandbox without which your “effort at entertainment” wouldn’t be possible.

You spend $10/hour to go to a movie.  By comparison if you get at least 5 hours out of a new Kerbal sandbox then you get at least that much utility.

In fact it’s almost impossible that you could possibly find cheaper entertainment.  We both know with the existing sandbox you can easily spend 100-200 hours plus with all the mods that will be released you could stay entertained for a very long time.  All for $50 plus their promise to deliver more.

It boggles the mind at how cheap people get.

I knew the inane "But a movie costs $10/hour" - "argument" would appear sooner rather than later. In a movie, all you have to do is sit back and be entertained (I guess you mainly pay to enjoy a movie on a large screen with surround sound?).  A set of Yahtzee dice costs can provide endless hours of fun, that does not main that they a worth more than a couple of dollars.

In this sandbox you can do nothing more than in a very bare bones version of KSP.

And there is no mod support (Scott Manley mentioned it in this very video).

And there is especially no promise to deliver more.

It boggles the mind how many people are there to buy an empty shell of a game at absurd prices and keep this  .. business scheme going.

 

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, cfds said:

In this sandbox you can do nothing more than in a very bare bones version of KSP.

Ignoring EVERYTHING, every improvement, big and small, for the sake of pushing the inane idea that Intercept is conspiring to scam us. Don't forget that Squad is still asking £30 for a broken, bare bones game they no longer bother to properly support. So if you want to egg on anyone, it is not Intercept. It's not the developer team that is still developing things.

7 minutes ago, cfds said:

And there is especially no promise to deliver more.

Except for the parts where they promised to deliver more.

[SSTO Crasher]

14 hours ago, t_v said:

For the tutorials, their audience includes young children, and while it might be annoying to sit through explanations posed in simple terms, it is at least better than the opposite problem of a chunk of the target audience not understanding the tutorials at all. And honestly, if I wanted to learn about a concept I was unfamiliar with, I would take a simple explanation first to make sure I understand the basic concept before going into potentially confusing details. 

Then do it the way Scott did, he basically taught hundreds of thousands to play ksp single handedly

[tstein]

32 minutes ago, cfds said:

 

In this sandbox you can do nothing more than in a very bare bones version of KSP.

 

 

And that  is what they promissed. They  always said it would be an EA with  a lot of features missing. The only thing that  really went out of the expectations is the minimum requirements (That only 34% of steam users  are compliant and less than 5% are compliant to the recommended ones) .   The developers were always very open that the EA release would have LESS things than the complete KSP1 in several aspects.

 

I  will not buy it  as of now because My computer  has only 16 GB Ram and a 1060 card and  I expect the experience to be very bad (given Unity   always leak memory in every game I play with it),  but  I have  bought6 EA games that were even more crude when they started (Kenshi) and  never regret for a single moment.

Edited February 21, 2023 by tstein

[cfds]

31 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Except for the parts where they promised to deliver more.

You sound like you will be buying the game this Friday. So you will be able to show me the part of the contract or the EULA where further development is promised then.

[tstein]

Just now, cfds said:

You sound like you will be buying the game this Friday. So you will be able to show me the part of the contract or the EULA where further development is promised then.

 If you buy on steam, Steam  does refund if the EA is cancelled (at least in my country since they are mandated by law)

[Chilkoot]

8 hours ago, Turbo Ben said:

I suspect it's only being released now because T2 promised it's investors it would be released this financial year.

Definitely played into the release window decisions.  T2's fiscal year end is March 31, and they need to get something on the books or the board will want some answers.

Trust me - you never want to get hauled before the board.  Never

[Bej Kerman]

17 hours ago, Tweeker said:

First and foremost, that tutorial is hideous. It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me.

I do believe the highly condescending tone you used to describe the VA and what they got paid to do would qualify this as irony.

17 hours ago, Tweeker said:

Why are they charging full price for an unfinished game?

Why would they charge £20 more than KSP 1's £30 for a game whose developers have not given up at the bottom of the hill, whose developers are going to spend the next few years doing more than what KSP 1's devs did - muck around trying and failing to redo the asset art styles 

I don't know, probably to do with the fact the devs know what they're doing and aren't, for example, going to push a career mode out, see it fail beyond a few hardcore players, and completely give up on making it make sense.

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

But if I had the lofty goal of drumming up interest in science, physics, and space for groups of underrepresented schoolers (girls and minorities), then my thoughts would be "He's a great choice, but a male, white, middle aged dude is not the role model we're looking for." That's something they had to take into account. Scott Manley would have been the easy thing to do. "But we do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"

It's nice to see people talk about things like this, so thank you

[ArmchairGravy]

What concerned me most about Scott's video is apo/periapsis nodes did not toggle where you could see what they were without mousing over them.  That's basic UI they don't have working 2 weeks before launch. Over three years of work and they don't have basic functionality in place two weeks before going EA. I now consider my expectations suitably lowered.

[Jacke]

10 hours ago, Turbo Ben said:

I would say too early. I suspect it's only being released now because T2 promised it's investors it would be released this financial year.

Most people don't even have the necessary hardware. The previews were done with a 7900X and a 4080, and it was still having performance issues.

It should be $30 in it's current state. Increase the price by $10 at every feature update.

Frontier Development pushed out the Odyssey DLC for Elite: Dangerous for exactly the same reason: end-of-year deadline.  And it played like crap on even overpowered hardware.  It wasn't ready at all and had no optimisations.  It broke the game several times and broke the ED community, which has never been the same.  After many updates, Odyssey is still very nice in parts but still massively underperforms.  And VR and console support was jettisoned along the way.

I'm afraid that's how KSP 2 will turn out.  Even for an Early Access release, its performance is bad.  Jankiness and lacking in the UI shows there hasn't been the attention-to-detail for the foundational aspects.  And so many core aspects are missing or disabled--and being disabled, we couldn't see how they are.  Missing features, especially in the foundations, are not easy to add in after the fact.

Agree or disagree with me, doesn't matter.  We'll have to see how KSP 2 develops.  Only time will tell.