Do you guys feel like this is what the fan patience deserved?

[kerbiloid]

15 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

The fans were patient? 

 

Posted August 19, 2019 (edited)
...
Posted Friday at 06:34 AM

4 years and 214 pages of patiency and humble, and hype.

They were.

Some could even achieved enlightenment.

[Periple]

50 minutes ago, TechDragon said:

But without more, it feels like it just wouldn't be a helpful bug report, know what I mean? 

TBH I think this would likely be one of the very few publicly-submitted bug reports that might be helpful. It's specific and there's a significant chance that it's not a duplicate. Only question is if anybody will see it in the noise. 

(My somewhat more cynical side suspects that the bug reports forum is there just as a pressure valve. Generally speaking going through bug reports from people who aren't trained QAs and are just reporting things at random just isn't worth the trouble, the effort invested in triaging them would give a better return if it was invested into in-house QA.)

[drhay53]

19 minutes ago, Periple said:

TBH I think this would likely be one of the very few publicly-submitted bug reports that might be helpful. It's specific and there's a significant chance that it's not a duplicate. Only question is if anybody will see it in the noise. 

(My somewhat more cynical side suspects that the bug reports forum is there just as a pressure valve. Generally speaking going through bug reports from people who aren't trained QAs and are just reporting things at random just isn't worth the trouble, the effort invested in triaging them would give a better return if it was invested into in-house QA.)

My guess is there's one person in QA/testing whose job it is to go through the bug report forum, attempt to reproduce, and file internal tickets. If there's not enough info in the post or it's not easy to reproduce, it's probably just ignored. 

[Periple]

20 minutes ago, drhay53 said:

My guess is there's one person in QA/testing whose job it is to go through the bug report forum, attempt to reproduce, and file internal tickets. If there's not enough info in the post or it's not easy to reproduce, it's probably just ignored. 

That's about the maximum effort I'd allocate. Most likely I'd just make it a priority B for the QA team -- if there's a bit of a gap between builds, then go see if you can find something interesting in the forum. Otherwise just keep 'em banging away at the builds, it's not like bugs are hard to find...

[drhay53]

2 minutes ago, Periple said:

That's about the maximum effort I'd allocate. Most likely I'd just make it a priority B for the QA team -- if there's a bit of a gap between builds, then go see if you can find something interesting in the forum. Otherwise just keep 'em banging away at the builds, it's not like bugs are hard to find...

I suppose I didn't mean it was their entire job, just that there is probably one person allocated some of their time to reviewing the forum bug reports. 

[danfarnsy]

17 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

The fans were patient? 

The ratio of "take your time, get it right" to "where's my KSP 2?!" was pretty solid, yes. I imagine moderating these forums is a bit like being a nurse in a hospital; it's easy to think everybody's injured and diseased. Or, one better, that the fans were patients. 

[Fullmetal Analyst]

27 minutes ago, danfarnsy said:

I imagine moderating these forums is a bit like being a nurse in a hospital; it's easy to think everybody's injured and diseased. Or, one better, that the fans were patients. 

i dont get ur analogy

[kerbiloid]

14 minutes ago, Fullmetal Analyst said:

i dont get ur analogy

To be always friendly, patient, and any time ready to help.

Spoiler

 

[danfarnsy]

20 minutes ago, Fullmetal Analyst said:

i dont get ur analogy

If you spend most of your time dealing with problems that are brought to you (like a forum moderator, or a medical professional), it's easy to overestimate the proportion of problems to non-problems.

[Meecrob]

On 2/28/2023 at 2:26 AM, 78stonewobble said:

It's applicable, because whether we call it early access, alpha testing, beta testing etc. Is irrelevant compared to the development stage, which is about the same.

My point is very simple; they did not charge money for 0.7.3

You cannot compare a free product to one that is paid for.

[Barral69Gaming]

On 2/26/2023 at 4:50 PM, Steve7893 said:

My perspective isn't what most folks here are, for reasons mentioned earlier in the thread.   $50 is (what did the guy say?) a couple of crates of eggs?  Or less to me.   Also, a few folks chimed in about having many years of experience as a software developer and that the developers should be ashamed.

I've been a software developer a long long time.   I've worked with a wide range of skill levels.   

What most likely happened is that the people who pushed the marketing hype were very non-technical and vastly underestimated the technical challenge.   Thats what likely caused the first release date to be 3 years before now.  As release dates get pushed, a lot of political deviltry arises within a company, and pressure increases not to let it slip again and again.   I've been in the position of trying to reign in marketing's unbridled optimism.   "Don't tell me I must go and tell the public we are pushing the release date a 4th year."   Most of the time upper level management gives them more clout, and trying to put a stop to such disasterous optimism gets you tarred.

But this is exactly the same effect that occurred when the decision was made to launch STS on that fateful cold Thursday morning back in 1986.

All that said, as a developer, I'm personally feeling like the guy above who said he was having fun testing it.    But I also sincerely feel for folks to whom the $50 is a painful amount to spend on this, and they have a right to be angry.   I do hope that updates come soon to change this.

I was considering if I would have personally rather have had them delay another year, or do what they did......and while I recognize it would not be the case for the majority of folks, as a dev myself, I'm glad to have access, so long as they will eventually get these things fixed.

 

 

I don't think people, (including me) would be so angry at the state of the game if it was 5 bucks or less while in this state. But it's being charged full price as if it's a finished and ready to play product. It's just not. No matter how many people try and say it WILL BE, it's not RIGHT NOW and that's what makes us angry at the price. I paid it. I won't refund it, (even if I wasn't ineligible at this point) because I too am a sucker and believe the game will get great. But I am honest with myself enough to know that right now, it's hot garbage and I got ripped off for 50 bucks.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

What’s the point of whinging about it, though?  Sure, a fully featured bug free KSP2 two years ago would have been delusionally wonderful, but it was completely unrealistic for the devs to promise that and those of us who understand how game development works should have known it was pretty unlikely.

We saw the delays, we saw the roadmap, we saw the ESA insider videos.  We knew what we were getting, and while disappointment is understandable, whining is, well, kind of, well, not WWMAHD, to be really, really, REALLY charitable.

Far better to accept reality, which is that we got the EA that we should have known was coming, and deal with it.  Play it to the extent that we want, report the bugs, and manage our disappointment like functioning adults.  The whole [I can’t afford $50/my PC is a potato/I didn’t read the roadmap/I expect that the EA should have been feature complete and bug free and demand to see the manager/Nate is a sadistic monster whose sole purpose in life is to spite the gods and destroy my happiness/IG are incompetent and TT is evil incarnate/the game is going to be cancelled/my disappointment is immeasurable and my life ruined] discussion was done to death two weeks ago.  Might as well reduce it to a ticky-box form with a 1 to eleventy-one hyperbole scale that gets automatically discarded once submitted.

Complaining is pointless.  Might as well just acknowledge the reality we live in and look forward to the patches.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Dakitess]

Complaining does matter. It allows for the KSP2 Team to be aware that nope, this is not fine. It's just that simple, I don't get what it's hard to understand here.

Then come the manner to complain, yes. But that's not your message. Complaining IS necessary.

Especially when people keep saying that this is the most wonderful game they've had in hands, that graphics are the most gorgeous they've ever seen, that 15 FPS is way enough for a game like KSP : it does not help. At all. It's their right to say so, it's quite okay as an opinion, but then it also allow for complaining to balance things out.

[MarcAbaddon]

For what's it worth I think pointing to the insider videos (I watched them) and saying people should have been aware of the bugs isn't fair.

But for knowing how buggy it was you had to watch 3rd party content in video format, so not only is a significant time investment but you also risk spoiling yourself. I think that's not reasonable. Even if as I stated I did watch them myself. The devs themselves did not give a statement about the game being buggy at the moment. If they had wanted to this item on the KSP 2 EA page would have been a good place to have it:

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

It's not on there. Nor do I feel it was communicated very clearly. Now, I am sure I will have people tell me it should simply be expected for an Early Access game and I don't feel like arguing this point. But I'll argue that the devs did not in fact communicate the bugs in advance - instead, they left it up to 3rd parties in video format.

In contrast, the roadmap was very public, including on the store page, so I agree that it wouldn't be fair to complain about those features not being in the game at the moment.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

42 minutes ago, Dakitess said:

Complaining does matter. It allows for the KSP2 Team to be aware that nope, this is not fine. It's just that simple, I don't get what it's hard to understand here.

Then come the manner to complain, yes. But that's not your message. Complaining IS necessary.

Especially when people keep saying that this is the most wonderful game they've had in hands, that graphics are the most gorgeous they've ever seen, that 15 FPS is way enough for a game like KSP : it does not help. At all. It's their right to say so, it's quite okay as an opinion, but then it also allow for complaining to balance things out.

“Done to death a week ago”, and really, do you think the devs or even the CMs think reading the same complaints being spammed over and over in the forums be people whose writing and argumentation skills are the only thing differentiating them from bots is important?  They have more useful feedback channels… like bug reports and the launcher’s feedback button.  Want to help and motivate the devs?  Spam those.

6 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

For what's it worth I think pointing to the insider videos (I watched them) and saying people should have been aware of the bugs isn't fair.

I think that if the video hadn’t been put out by third parties who happen to be very prominent KSP YouTubers who the devs flew in to an event specifically for the purposes of providing hours of gameplay and reaction videos that I’d agree with you.  The ESA vids were as much part of the devs’ comms plan as if they’d filmed them themselves, and since they were unfiltered commentary by respected sources are therefore more credible and trustworthy.  Good disclosure, in other words.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Dakitess]

Yes ?...

So you suggest to spam the Bug-Report with complaints rather than actual bug reports or suggestion ? It's really not the same thing, and it's not a good idea to pollute their tool with theses discussions which belong quite well here. And yes, they are reading. Maybe be not this topics, maybe not another one, but that's the things : they can't ignore the "rant" all over the place, and I don't think they want to ignore the facts. They're well aware of the global issue but it still helps to, indeed, confirm as user that we (for those who are concerned) are not satisfied.

I'm doing my part of Bug-Report, Ideas suggestions, feedback, in the launcher, but i'm also feeding the forum, be it with compliments about what have been done so far (not much on KSP2, yeah), as well as constructive criticism. 90% won't be read by KSP2 Team, maybe 99%, it's okay, it just allow people to interact together, to deal with people that are satisfied and eventually can make our opinions change or shift. And 1-10% might be read by devs / com', mine or other's guys posts, and it helps counter-balancing the player that genuinely satisfied / very enthousiast.

Don't spam the bug report with ranting. If you're salty, Forum / Discord will help, don't pollute official tools.

[MarcAbaddon]

18 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I think that if the video hadn’t been put out by third parties who happen to be very prominent KSP YouTubers who the devs flew in to an event specifically for the purposes of providing hours of gameplay and reaction videos that I’d agree with you.  The ESA vids were as much part of the devs’ comms plan as if they’d filmed them themselves, and since they were unfiltered commentary by respected sources are therefore more credible and trustworthy.  Good disclosure, in other words.

I disagree. Important information about the state of the game needs to be on the store page and the web page for the game. You should not be required to follow influencers or Twitter to learn about it. 

Allowing people to play the game and talk about it, is a good measure on top of their own documentation, but it in no way should replace it.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

4 hours ago, Dakitess said:

Yes ?...

So you suggest to spam the Bug-Report with complaints rather than actual bug reports or suggestion ? It's really not the same thing, and it's not a good idea to pollute their tool with theses discussions which belong quite well here. And yes, they are reading. Maybe be not this topics, maybe not another one, but that's the things : they can't ignore the "rant" all over the place, and I don't think they want to ignore the facts. They're well aware of the global issue but it still helps to, indeed, confirm as user that we (for those who are concerned) are not satisfied.

I'm doing my part of Bug-Report, Ideas suggestions, feedback, in the launcher, but i'm also feeding the forum, be it with compliments about what have been done so far (not much on KSP2, yeah), as well as constructive criticism. 90% won't be read by KSP2 Team, maybe 99%, it's okay, it just allow people to interact together, to deal with people that are satisfied and eventually can make our opinions change or shift. And 1-10% might be read by devs / com', mine or other's guys posts, and it helps counter-balancing the player that genuinely satisfied / very enthousiast.

Don't spam the bug report with ranting. If you're salty, Forum / Discord will help, don't pollute official tools.

Sigh.  I should have been clearer.  “Spam the bug reports” should be read as “submitting as many useful bug reports as you can is the best way of providing feedback”.

Glad to hear that that is what you’re doing.  This is the way.

As for the ranting, well, I think it’s a case of gamers as a whole have developed a culture of such massive toxic hysterical meltdowny overreaction to every little thing that it just gets taken for granted as opposed to taken at face value (this is part of why I won’t identify as a gamer in public but that’s another discussion).  Gamers are going to gamer (over anything and everything) and the meltdowns just get ignored by the professionals (or at least I’d expect that’s the case).

[Superfluous J]

9 hours ago, Dakitess said:

Complaining does matter. It allows for the KSP2 Team to be aware that nope, this is not fine.

8 hours ago, Dakitess said:

So you suggest to spam the Bug-Report with complaints rather than actual bug reports or suggestion ?

So you suggest that someone submitting valid bug reports that showcase all the places the game is lacking ALSO *NEEDS* to complain on social media about how much garbage the game is, or the developers won't know there are problems?

 

 

[Dakitess]

Yes ?... Because, that's really not the same thing at all ?

Bug report owe its name. It's about bug. They also added some suggestion fields, fortunately, to give ideas and feedback. But that's totally different from an opinion feedback, a discussion between members of a forum. You don't want to flood the Quality Team / whatever their name with "Amagad, it's really not okay to release such an EA at 50 bucks" and others "Dang, it really does not look like a 2020+ game at all" or "My PC can't run it while it runs OK Hoghwarts Legacy" : because these are debated, because it leads to 20 lines passionate feedback / opinion / rant / compliments. These are not suggestion, nor ideas, it's just opinions. Surely, you can turn them so that they can be used as feedback / bug reports, like "this game should run on a 7700HQ + 1050Ti Low 30 FPS" or "This game would benefit from better graphics" : that's fine, you can and even you should.

But that's not discussion. It does not allow for in-depth opinion regarding why you say so, what's your background, your mind about it, and it does not allow the devs to collect a global feeling : forum does that, some (a lot probably) are posting here but not in the BugTracker for whatever reasons.

If you're OK for topics that aim to compliment the game, the devs, the com', anything, why would you be opposed to identic threads about what is not right about the game, the dev, the com', anything ? It needs an equilibrium, and it does help. Again, rant would not have been THAT salty if some other people did not get hyperbolic on compliments, regarding the game being so crazy beautiful, perfectly fine à 15FPS for a game like that, and OK to ask 2060 when other AAA are doing "fine" with 960 because, I quote, "come on guys, step up your machines, 1060 is 6 yo, it's totally fine that new game won't run on them", completely missing the point. This is okay to think so, it's okay to say so, but it's also okay to disagree aaaaand... Say so.

Oh, and, most of the salty discussions comes from defensers people constantly using "whine" as a base word when there is some criticism. It triggers reaction, for sure. It does not help, it only add oxygen to the fire, it's most of the time not relevant / rude / childish. Even Devs and Com' KSP2 team ask thoses guys to stop, as THIS was actually toxic. The very first days, or even some days before the release of the Minimum Specs Requirements, it was barely impossible to say nothing againt the game. Like, period. Non-sense. Moderators had to warn people to stop saying that others are "whining" and all.

So yeah, stop doing that, just respect opinions as long as they're politely written, correct regarding the work involved. I don't like how KSP2 is looking so far, in so many aspects, I find that it's almost ruined and many others things, i'm even frankly salted on some aspects and I can be harsh, but never without some nuance than enable the discussion, the debate, and most other do the same.

[sturmhauke]

On 2/26/2023 at 5:03 AM, Fengist said:

Have you ever gotten a hamburger at a fast food joint that looked anything like the one on the menu?  You seem surprised to have received a product that's inferior to what was promised in all the marketing hype. 

Steam charts showed on Friday that over 25,000 people were playing KSP2. That's over $1.25 million gross on day one.

I'd say that all those promises you quoted worked exactly as intended, just like the pictures of that tasty hamburger.

Now that you realize that marketing never reflects  reality, all you can do now is decide if you're hungry enough to try the fries.

Disclaimer: I haven't bought KSP2 yet, because I rarely buy early access or preorder games. The dustup we're seeing is a perfect example of why.

Anyway, this isn't like ordering a Big Mac and getting a slightly sad Big Mac with wilted lettuce and a day old bun. This is like going to a supposedly better burger joint, ordering a $10 burger, and getting that same slightly sad Big Mac but in a different wrapper.

[SciMan]

I don't think what we got on launch day is even a game that deserves the name "KSP" with any number after it, not even as the next version of KSP 1.

Not only is there an incredible amount missing BEYOND what was put in the roadmap as "explicitly not present on release", there's loads of basic functionality missing that nobody ever said wouldn't be in the game (non impulsive burn planner, optimized resource calculations, etc).

No. Not only that. Instead, the features we DO have are basically like someone was given a bunch of "shiny graphics" aka 3d models and textures and UI assets, and then given 6 months to assemble some sort of space flight simulator sandbox game out of it.

As expected given that particular context, only 10% of the things are working in any way consistently, and it's only the most critical things (UI navigation.... and that's about it, and even then sometimes not even that).

What is needed is a ground-up reboot from the beginning again, but you can keep the art assets.

Start over, this one's no good. Or if you don't start over, consider doing some basic functionality testing and not letting features out the door if they don't work.

And I don't mean "they worked once, that's good, send it". I mean detailed "we tried really hard to break it (we even invited Danny2462 and SWDennis and EJ_SA) and it doesn't break" kind of testing. (EJ breaks things in a way that he gets more functionality out of them than was intended, but the other two break things in the "destroy the universe or divide by zero" kind of way).

That kind of testing is what I feel like I'm doing when I fire up KSP 2 right now. But I stopped playing it because I don't feel like I'm even giving feedback that would be relevant to what they might be working on now, because they probably cut off this branch as "release".... right when they announced the release date. It does feel like no useful coding work on basic functionality has been done since then.

It's kinda hard to keep playing a game when it's not acting like a game. And KSP 2 is not acting like a game. It's acting like "version 0.001 build 3" of a tech demo that was never intended to be a finished game in the first place.

And that just kinda drives a knife into the goodwill I had for Private Division and Take-Two.

I don't hold Intercept Games accountable for this. This has "publisher said push it out the door or you get no more money" written all over it, and it's always sad to see a game die like that.

Management always thinks it knows how long coding the game is going to take, and is ALWAYS wrong about it (because it always takes longer).
Marketing always fails to keep expectations in check.
Those are two constants in game development at least at the current time.

Knowing those two things, the fate of KSP 2's release should have been known since it was announced. And then the pandemic happened, combined with the transfer from Star Theory to Intercept Games, and it all just got even worse. There was OBVIOUSLY critical knowledge lost during that transfer, and the whole work from home thing just doesn't work when you need to talk to someone face to face to make them understand just how important something is or isn't, or how much you really don't have done but can't say because it makes you look like you're not doing anything useful (those are all problems that can be solved but not easily if you're expected to "look like you're doing something" no matter if you're doing something or not).

Point is, either PD or TT Interactive said "Don't care, didn't ask, light this candle or I'm gonna tear it down around your ears" and Star Theory just basically didn't have a choice in the matter but to say "Alright, here's that train wreck you ordered" and that's exactly what we got.

We got a train wreck of a game. And that's being generous, because we only got 25% of a locomotive, and 10% of 1 freight car.

I already played more than 2 hours, so I'm no longer eligible for a refund. But if I had needed the money I spent on KSP 2 for something else that same day, I would have had ZERO problems asking for a very much deserved refund.
IMO they have a lot of nerve charging any money at all for this game in the state it's in right now.

But what do I want? I don't want the downfall of Intercept Games, or Take-Two Interactive, or Private Division.
No. I want this game to become a case study in how to make a bad release of a game, so that the whole video game industry can finally learn that it's been doing things the wrong, stupid way for over 10 years now (or at least the AAA gaming industry has), and finally start releasing games that are FULL GAMES ON RELEASE again.
Day one DLC doesn't matter to me. Neither does day one patches.
What matters, is that the game is playable upon release. KSP 2 is not currently in a state I would call playable. I keep playing it for a short time here and there to check if anything's changed, and every time I do that, I encounter some kind of bug (often the same "rocket is too wobbly, build smaller and don't go anywhere other than LKO" bug) that just frustrates me so much I stop playing for at least that day if not more.

I don't really mind having the game run at 5 FPS with my RTX 3070 Ti GPU and i7-9700k CPU running at 4.6 Ghz (overclocked from the stock speed of 3.6 Ghz), with my 32 GB of DDR4-3200mhz ram.
I can make the game lag that much with a rocket that has only 50 parts.
Yes that level of performance is unacceptable, considering that it took over 500 parts to get that level of lag in KSP1, on my previous system that wasn't even close to as good as the one I'm using now.
But I've played KSP (and other famously low FPS and/or unoptimized games) for so long that 5 FPS is something I can still play in.

Right now I'm looking at KSP 2 like a disappointed father looks at their kid.
It's the "I'm not angry, but this is unacceptable, and you need to do better, now take a moment to think about what you've done that got you here" look.
I'm sure you know the feelings that look gives you. I know I do.

It's true. Given the circumstances, I'm not angry at Intercept Games.
But it is undeniable that they need to do better.
In fact, once they iron out a lot of the bugs, they need to basically do a second launch campaign for this game, because everyone saw the state the game is in right now and went "Nope, not playing that until it gets better".
Like I said, they should only do that 2nd launch campaign once they get it into a state where it's performing adequately and rockets aren't falling apart for no reason or turning into noodles because you used the "wrong" part.

Oh and about those noodle rockets:
Wobbly rockets need to be exterminated. It's no longer "cute" and "oh lol kerbal" when you have an interplanetary mission to Jool sitting on the pad, you go to launch it, and it folds in half and explodes on the way up.
"You just need to use more struts" you say.
Guess what, tried that, no change. Well, OK, this time it folded 90 degrees and then exploded. So it bent less, but it still exploded.
I've made rockets that have literally half the part count made up by struts and only struts (no other structural parts), and they STILL bend and explode.
In fact, sometimes putting more struts on them makes them explode SOONER.
There have to be other ways of introducing a structural consideration into the design requirements that don't involve the rocket flexing like it's made of a pool noodle and not SOLID METAL TANKS AND BEAMS AND THINGS THAT GENERALLY DON'T BEND.

We don't even have the ability to control what auto-strutting is happening, if there is even any of that happening at all.
What ever happened to that Physics LOD thing I was hearing about? That made it sound like it would make rockets LESS wobbly, not more.
Another feature that couldn't make it to release day?

Edited March 15, 2023 by SciMan
More detail on why I'm disappointed

[didkodidko]

Frankly All I wanted is well behaving rovers (new physics) aaaaand L1 and L2 points + some simplified n-body interactions.

I got none, I got less than before, but it's broken...

[Periple]

51 minutes ago, didkodidko said:

Frankly All I wanted is well behaving rovers (new physics) aaaaand L1 and L2 points + some simplified n-body interactions.

I got none, I got less than before, but it's broken...

But none of that was ever promised! 

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

But none of that was ever promised! 

@didkodidkodidn't say they were promised just that's what they wanted   And KSP2 did set a lot of expectations  with respect to slaying the kraken,  that physics would be enhanced beyond KSP1, that there would be  n-body physics.  Did they make an iron clad legal promise? No.  But then again, they don't make iron clad legal promises that the game will ever run on your hardware, that it won't be cancelled tomorrow, that they won't take code from modders and resell it as DLC, that they won't revoke your license to use that software, etc etc etc...

If you only go by their 'promises' I think no one would buy T2 software ever.

Edited March 15, 2023 by RocketRockington