Where are the devs?

[jost]

20 hours ago, justmeman117 said:

 

I'm also sure the devs and Take Two are as unhappy with the launch as the player base, this will probably hurt their profits and reputation in the long run. I've also wondered if Steam fines publishers for refunds, in which case, KSP 2 has incurred a massive cost that wouldn't have happened it they just left it in the oven as it were. I still ultimately blame Take Two. It was most likely their call to release it by this arbitrary release date. And it's such a TRASH way of managing developer time. They've wasted how many developer hours now having to gut the entire game of anything unfinished, and whats left never had a chance to be optimized? And now they have to optimize what's left, and THEN return to the unfinished content, THEN finish it, THEN implement it piecemeal, THEN optimize each piece, THEN still get bug reports from annoyed players that then become your play testers now that it's "released". It reminds me of doing 4 times the work to cannibalize parts off of grounded planes, just to get other planes up and running slightly sooner than waiting for parts to ship through the supply system. This is the kind of trash workflow that leads to developer crunch and burnout culture. I get that games need to come out SOMEDAY, but Take Two are literally blind if they think this was done enough. You can't just WILL a game into being complete enough by an arbitrary date, to release. I get the impression publishers put release dates on devs to pressure them into working harder to get it done by that date, but when it's SO out of line with reality, it becomes physically impossible.

Thanks for your insight in plane maintenance. I'm happy I was never responsible for something the live of people relied on. 
Regarding "developer crunch" and "burnout" culture: At some point of above mentioned project we were expected to work every saturday and do overtime work during the week to resulting in 50-60 hour weeks.I finally pulled the plug and switched to another job. Some developers did too (as already said: I wasn't one). 
Now what's the point of my story telling (or like we say in Germany: Grandpa tells stories from war nobody wants to hear "Opa erzählt von Krieg" ): I suppose that the developers already do overtime work since the project is obviouvsly in a critical state. The last thing managment should to to order them to do even more overtime work: Even with the current wave of layoffs in tech industry any competent developer will find another job (he/she might need to move to another city though) if he thinks that IG expects to much.  The question is whether somebody will be available for hire to replace him/her: If I would look for a job as game developer I woudn't join a studio which flagship product is in a high risk state.  There is already twitter for people who likes to work "full hardcore", most people don't want this and I can't blame them.

[justmeman117]

1 hour ago, jost said:

Thanks for your insight in plane maintenance. I'm happy I was never responsible for something the live of people relied on. 
Regarding "developer crunch" and "burnout" culture: At some point of above mentioned project we were expected to work every saturday and do overtime work during the week to resulting in 50-60 hour weeks.I finally pulled the plug and switched to another job. Some developers did too (as already said: I wasn't one). 
Now what's the point of my story telling (or like we say in Germany: Grandpa tells stories from war nobody wants to hear "Opa erzählt von Krieg" ): I suppose that the developers already do overtime work since the project is obviouvsly in a critical state. The last thing managment should to to order them to do even more overtime work: Even with the current wave of layoffs in tech industry any competent developer will find another job (he/she might need to move to another city though) if he thinks that IG expects to much.  The question is whether somebody will be available for hire to replace him/her: If I would look for a job as game developer I woudn't join a studio which flagship product is in a high risk state.  There is already twitter for people who likes to work "full hardcore", most people don't want this and I can't blame them.

I lived in Germany for 4 years and never heard that expression, lol. That's pretty funny.

That's about the same reason I didn't reenlist in the military. In theory, we had usual 40 hour weeks... But usually that would turn into 50 from staying late at least 2 hours for dumb reasons every day, and quickly turned into 60-70 hour weeks when you consider ancillary nonsense you were required to do "on your own time" (training, working out to pass the PT test, in-processing/out-processing TDYs, etc). These things were supposed to happen during the duty day, but when on midnight shift for 3 years straight, that basically never happened... But they still had to happen. And occasionally we just had bad days that turned into 12 hours or more to get a job done. I remember one time we had a jet hard land, and had to remove all 4 engines for inspections... That was a month of 12 hour shifts. During that month, they also pushed out my CTO days for weekend duty, and the result was I ended up basically working 12 days straight at one point.

People literally lose themseves when they have nothing but their job. I genuinely think overtime should be practically banned to ensure paychecks do actually stay in line with inflation (instead compensating with overtime), and given how often employers abuse it.

I hope the KSP 2 dev team are doing ok. Of all the dev teams out there, I hope they in particular aren't going through dev crunch. I genuinely think crunch harms the quality of programming in a game, since it forces devs to do bandaides to get stuff done by certain deadlines, rather than create permanent well functioning systems. I think the end of physical media for consoles and PCs means devs dont have to take time, slow down, and ensure their games are well optimized to run off limited storage space, and the result has been ballooning timeline expectations by publishers (as well as ballooning game sizes).

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Because fixing the game takes priority over wasting time entering slap fights with unruly forum users.

This.  Considering the amount of vitriol and anger over EA - some of it justified, but the vast majority just coming from people who wouldn't have been happy with a full-feature game 3 years ago at no cost - would serve no purpose other than to delay fixes.

[radimov]

29 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

This.  Considering the amount of vitriol and anger over EA - some of it justified, but the vast majority just coming from people who wouldn't have been happy with a full-feature game 3 years ago at no cost - would serve no purpose other than to delay fixes.

They have 3 community managers the developers don't have to waste their time.
 

[p331083]

On 2/27/2023 at 5:19 AM, RayneCloud said:

I don't even have the energy to explain to you why this is just wrong and incredibly unhelpful. They wont pull the plug on this. 

What in the history of the development of KSP2 gives you any faith that KSP2 will become what the dev's said it was or would be 2-3 years ago?

In the real world we have seen nothing but broken promises and a woefully buggy barebones "EA" KSP2 delivered that is absolutely nothing at all like was talked about prior to its release.

On 2/27/2023 at 5:45 AM, Periple said:

"5 years in development" – that sounds pretty normal for a game this size and this complex.

Complex? KSP2 at this moment is essentially KSP 1 when it was at it's .1 state. And this is after 3 1/2+ years of development. You are acting like they are developing a new MMO to compete with WoW or FF.

[Monkey8EA5T]

Have we had an official word from the Devs on their response to the feedback yet? I'm sure they're working away in the background, but might be good to see some official response acknowledging the issues, and owning them, rather than the apparent radio silence we are seeing at the moment?

Apologies if I have missed it or it's been posted elsewhere (might be on Discord, but I don't use it, as seems to be a nightmare to separate official posts from noise).

Cheers

 

MB

[RayneCloud]

Discord.  

[mattihase]

Not a great platform for these kinds of things, not super visible and things are easily buried, but it's the way the web's going these days I suppose.

[RayneCloud]

Discord has a lot of really good options now, it's just a matter of setting it up correctly and it helps a lot with real time interaction. They just need to mirror here on the forums and be more vocal elsewhere. Which they've heard. 

[mattihase]

that hearing is good to have heard.

[Sequence]

They need an announcements channel on the discord if it's going to be to main source of communication. Trying to find posts by dev accounts in the general channel isn't easy. 

[HowDoKerbal]

44 minutes ago, Sequence said:

They need an announcements channel on the discord if it's going to be to main source of communication. Trying to find posts by dev accounts in the general channel isn't easy. 

I agree but you can check the pins on each channel to find the important posts more easily than scrolling. Just an FYI for anyone coming across this.

[atomontage]

47 minutes ago, Sequence said:

They need an announcements channel on the discord if it's going to be to main source of communication. Trying to find posts by dev accounts in the general channel isn't easy. 

There actually is an announcements channel.

[Sequence]

 

3 minutes ago, atomontage said:

There actually is an announcements channel.

 

4 minutes ago, HowDoKerbal said:

I agree but you can check the pins on each channel to find the important posts more easily than scrolling. Just an FYI for anyone coming across this.

Thanks for the info, I was only looking at the KSP2 section, didn't see the announcements one at the top. 

[Moons]

1 hour ago, mattihase said:

Not a great platform for these kinds of things, not super visible and things are easily buried, but it's the way the web's going these days I suppose.

To be honest i think Discord in general is awful and is destroying a lot of makes the internet great. Discord is chaotic - it does an awful job of having dedicated discussions and its impossible to search for information on discord via google later on - so most of the information presented on discord is pretty much lost. Ive got most of the most usefull information ive got with google search and finding old threads - be it technical problems, opinions etc. with discord all of that is gone.

 

It is beyond me why so many companies are using discord - i think the only thing its good for is short-lived discussions in rather small groups and for grouping up with friends in voice chat etc. - in regards to the way its used now mostly - replacing forums - its just awful ...

 

 

Also they seriously need to communicate more outside of Discord - many people dont use that - including me.  Especially after a launch like this.

[MarcAbaddon]

Discord is good for two things:

1) Quick way to setup a group internal discussion channel, e.g. it is really great for MMO Guilds

2) As a general chatting tool

It's a lot worse at replacing public forums, but is becoming better at that too due to threads. But not being able to google remains an important limitation.

[Space_Coyote]

People don't understand the quiet from the devs, but I understand why it is..

It's because they've heard you and they're busy grinding down the bugs and issues with the game..

But then the players who've never played KSP 1 don't realize how much effort it takes to program a game and trying to answer questions to the players at the same time.. So if you understand this, you would understand that people sometimes need time to think and concentrate and focus on the issues at hand. They don't need the distractions of a person bugging them for rude comments form the players...

 

Think of it this way, You're doing your homework for a class project (if you are in school) or you have a job deadline to meet so you can get a raise and if you have children and they come running in every few minutes to bug you, would you get any work done? Of course not..

So as they say in KSP 1's Mod disccussion , "Don't annoy the programmers." Because they are working hard to make you happy..

 

Space_Coyote

[tstein]

1 minute ago, Space_Coyote said:

People don't understand the quiet from the devs, but I understand why it is..

It's because they've heard you and they're busy grinding down the bugs and issues with the game..

But then the players who've never played KSP 1 don't realize how much effort it takes to program a game and trying to answer questions to the players at the same time.. So if you understand this, you would understand that people sometimes need time to think and concentrate and focus on the issues at hand. They don't need the distractions of a person bugging them for rude comments form the players...

 

Think of it this way, You're doing your homework for a class project (if you are in school) or you have a job deadline to meet so you can get a raise and if you have children and they come running in every few minutes to bug you, would you get any work done? Of course not..

So as they say in KSP 1's Mod disccussion , "Don't annoy the programmers." Because they are working hard to make you happy..

 

Space_Coyote

When people say DEVs they are not talking about the programmers, but the team as a whole. Obviously  people do not expect programmers to tackle communication, we are usually very bad at  talking to people.

[MarcAbaddon]

Yup, they do have community managers but it seems they have pretty much neglected the forums.

[Nuke]

are they going to be one of those devs that only uses discord. gross. i dont want that on my system. its a gaping security hole, and they require their users be members of the cult of the smartphone.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Nuke

[Scarecrow71]

11 minutes ago, Space_Coyote said:

People don't understand the quiet from the devs

People who don't understand why the devs are quiet right now need to ask themselves how they'd feel about being grilled by thousands of people over the stuff they produce on their job.  And then ask themselves if they would rather be working or dealing with a bunch of people they would never normally be in contact with otherwise.

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, Moons said:

To be honest i think Discord in general is awful and is destroying a lot of makes the internet great. Discord is chaotic - it does an awful job of having dedicated discussions and its impossible to search for information on discord via google later on - so most of the information presented on discord is pretty much lost. Ive got most of the most usefull information ive got with google search and finding old threads - be it technical problems, opinions etc. with discord all of that is gone.

 

It is beyond me why so many companies are using discord - i think the only thing its good for is short-lived discussions in rather small groups and for grouping up with friends in voice chat etc. - in regards to the way its used now mostly - replacing forums - its just awful ...

 

 

Also they seriously need to communicate more outside of Discord - many people dont use that - including me.  Especially after a launch like this.

thats the trend, put everything in an app container that they control, so you cant block ads and malware. 

i really dont mind that they are tight lipped, they likely need all hands on deck for the inevitable point release. but discord, discord can go try and land on the sun. 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Nuke

[tstein]

16 minutes ago, Nuke said:

are they going to be one of those devs that only uses discord. gross. i dont want that on my system. its a gaping security hole, and they require their users be members of the cult of the smartphone.

In fact no, you can use discord web and only on  the browser.

[Fullmetal Analyst]

3 hours ago, Sequence said:

Trying to find posts by dev accounts in the general channel isn't easy. 

the devs just dont post in the discord, they dont post anywhere

 

2 hours ago, Moons said:

To be honest i think Discord in general is awful and is destroying a lot of makes the internet great.

discord is an awesome tool if used correctly, sadly the moderators there focus on abusing their powers rather than making the discord a nice and useful place for everyone

the discord moderators literally do nothing but mute/ban people for posting gifs or whatever, i literally got banned for making up ksp2 lore lol.

so yeah the forum currently is a much nicer place for discussions.

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, Fullmetal Analyst said:

the discord moderators literally do nothing but mute/ban people for posting gifs or whatever, i literally got banned for making up ksp2 lore lol.

Well, considering the primary focus of some of the channels right now is bug reports and asking questions on gameplay, I can see why the mods/admins are muting people who are way off topic.