To the KSP 2 Dev Team

[Dakota]

6 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

Though, this does seem like quite the oversight. May I ask why the forums are an afterthought requiring a "re think in strategy" when they've been the major focal point of community interaction since the start of KSP 1?

We've seen a tremendous increase is discussion, requests, and players demanding our attention on other platforms - so we're figuring out the best way to make sure we have enough time in the day to respond to everyone on every platform. It's also just to figure out ways to make sure any information that comes out, for example the fact that the patch is not coming this week (something that was communicated on Discord on Saturday) is mirrored here in a simple way. But that isn't an announcement, it was just someone asking a question and we responded. All major announcements like patch notes and such are already planned to be mirrored, right now there's just a lot of small tidbits of information that have been shared on Twitter and Discord that haven't been mirrored here.

6 hours ago, Vl3d said:

The forums have the most in-depth and competent feedback, with pros and cons opinions considered in discussions. Also it's where the modders and veterans reside. The forums are gold for EA.

We agree with this - although I do think the Discord allows for a more immediate and human connection, which is why generally you'll see us just hanging out in there (plus the levity). That doesn't make the Forums any less important, in fact I do like the communication style here on the forums for the reasons above. It provides more in-depth conversations/feedback and generally steers away from the memery the Discord is known for.

[Bej Kerman]

16 hours ago, PD_Dakota said:

Just popping my head in here that we're rethinking our comms strategy to make sure any info shared through the Discord is mirrored here. We're around and listening and interacting on Discord and socials, but we definitely have not been giving the forums the time you all deserve. 

Yes. Thank you. I'm not sure why so much information had to be dropped in that cesspool to be quickly buried by rapid messages rather than here in the first place, but yeah. Thanks for the thought

[RayneCloud]

2 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

We've seen a tremendous increase is discussion, requests, and players demanding our attention on other platforms - so we're figuring out the best way to make sure we have enough time in the day to respond to everyone on every platform. It's also just to figure out ways to make sure any information that comes out, for example the fact that the patch is not coming this week (something that was communicated on Discord on Saturday) is mirrored here in a simple way. But that isn't an announcement, it was just someone asking a question and we responded. All major announcements like patch notes and such are already planned to be mirrored, right now there's just a lot of small tidbits of information that have been shared on Twitter and Discord that haven't been mirrored here.

We agree with this - although I do think the Discord allows for a more immediate and human connection, which is why generally you'll see us just hanging out in there (plus the levity). That doesn't make the Forums any less important, in fact I do like the communication style here on the forums for the reasons above. It provides more in-depth conversations/feedback and generally steers away from the memery the Discord is known for.

Thanks Dakota. I appreciate you being in here with us and responding. 

[regex]

2 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

It's also just to figure out ways to make sure any information that comes out, for example the fact that the patch is not coming this week (something that was communicated on Discord on Saturday) is mirrored here in a simple way. But that isn't an announcement, it was just someone asking a question and we responded.

I mean, quite frankly that is something that's an announcement, it's important information for people and sets expectations.

IMO you really need to ask yourself, when you answer a question on the Discord, whether people elsewhere would appreciate that information as well, and act on that if so. I'm pretty active on Discord in several servers but I didn't join the KSP server because I figured it would have far more users than is useful to me, personally, to follow. I have no real desire to join the server even now, but seemingly innocent information is still important to me.

[Dakota]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

They are not. 

All that is really needed is effective community managers - which @PD_Dakota and @Ghostii_Spaceare discovering is a bigger responsibility than they imagined.  I suspect they anticipated being able to coast along with a happy community and do fun and interesting things to bring more people in.

If they are still doing that - they're making a HUGE mistake. 

They need to put on the hat of 'hey guys this is beta!  There are a lot of bugs!  Here's when you can expect the first patch!  Guess what?  We really appreciate your efforts!  We are collecting info and passing on to the Devs - but here is the priority list for right now.  Expect the next update two days after the patch hits! 

Sadly I get the feeling that they are in the Discord and the socials still trying to figure out how to increase sales. 

Nope. My job is not to convince people to buy the game (that's marketing's job), it's to communicate clearly so that people continue to play it and feel engaged with our team. Obviously we've failed to do that on the forums, and we're working to fix that moving forward. KSP2 has a long future ahead of it, and being critical like this, not only of the game but also of our communication style, is key to setting the standard in how we should work moving forward.

[Moons]

1 hour ago, radimov said:

Maybe the developers can't say more, but even the community managers are not active.

That would be normal since a professional company has different people for different roles and it would be chaotic if every person was allowed to talk in public as a spokesman of the company but there are ways in between but all of this has to be set up by the management. I think the main problem of modern community management 2 things:

- the separation of community management and developers (obviously a community manager cant say much without beeing involved in what is happening)

- the modern gaming industry that has become big business - and combined with the launch price of 50$ everything a community manager will say will actually be understood as binding promises

 

This probably makes it even harder. But to be honest some games to me showed how good community management can work - its a mixture of simply showing the community via interacdtion that problems are known and beeing worked on and that the frustration is understood and looking for some socially capable developer/programmer etc. that can act as a sort of interface between the community and the developers - i think the job should be to give people the impression that work is beeing done and that their voices are beeing heard. I know thats a hard thing to do but if it works its millions of times better than reduced communication.

 

And last but not least im really not sure if Discord is the best place to do that - it just feels like such a chaotic way of communications and since its not in google most people will never even see those interactions.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[Dakota]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Most of the work they are doing won't be visible to us. CMs are the contact point between the community and the studio, most of what they do is inward-facing. Especially in this kind of situation. 

I will support this comment. A lot of what we've been doing since Friday is internal. For some insight we've been having launch day post-mortems, rethinking our internal productivity tools to make sure we can handle the incoming workload, discussing feedback/bug report silos, tracking the current early modding scene, and much more I can't really talk about.

Communication goes both ways, and for every response we're giving on Discord/Forums/Twitter, we're handing multiple reports to the team of sentiment surrounding all parts of the game.

[RayneCloud]

3 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

I will support this comment. A lot of what we've been doing since Friday is internal. For some insight we've been having launch day post-mortems, rethinking our internal productivity tools to make sure we can handle the incoming workload, discussing feedback/bug report silos, tracking the current early modding scene, and much more I can't really talk about.

Communication goes both ways, and for every response we're giving on Discord/Forums/Twitter, we're handing multiple reports to the team of sentiment surrounding all parts of the game.

From one former CM turned QA to another? You're doing a good job and yes, I mean that. I had some frustrations and some feedback and you are in here talking to us and I am really glad that you are. 

[Bej Kerman]

I believe a bit much faith was put into the Discord. it's just another message overload in which useful discussions are vastly outweighed by pointless, directionless background chatter.

[TechDragon]

13 minutes ago, Periple said:

Another problem is creating expectations, if they would start rolling out nightlies the fans would start to expect one every night, so if there's a bad one and they decide to hold it it would be THE SKY IS FALLING THE GAEM IS DOMED WHERES MY NIGHTLY BUILD WHAAA all over again.

I do know that if it was up to me I would nix public nightly builds until the DevOps/QA pipe is in much better shape than it is. Downside risk is just so much bigger than the upside. 

Your right about the potential communication risks, which is why I don't think they could release this sort of build without a bit of effort putting up some danger tape and guard rails to make sure no one can confuse a nightly build bug from a release build bug, assuming there's a screenshot or video at least, and its a lot easier for the community managers to calmly reassure people that nightly builds are ephemeral work snapshots, some may have major issues if they are working on massive things, and I suspect it would take several days of getting worse before this sort of messaging lost its effectiveness. 

And as for the second bit, yeah this is where it really comes down to insider knowledge neither of us have... for all we know the entire release process is fully automated and they just merge to the release branch or tag a version number on the main branch and their build pipeline swings into gear and generates a build... nothing about automated build of a runnable binary ensures the quality of those builds, I had a little mini rant about game testing in another thread that I wont repeat in full, suffice to say that without knowledge of the current Build, Testing, and Release pipeline, all the manual and automatic steps in the chain, all were both doing is armchair quarterbacking from a safe distance based on personal experience.  I only brought up the idea of more frequent releases because I've seen it done well for other games and programs that have communities desperate to see updates and progress, as well as the possibilities for them to have a beta program that multiplies their "calm" portion of the community. 

If I had access to a beta build and wasnt gagged with some kind of NDA, but asked nicely to not comment in detail (as opposed to not at all) about the changes bugs outside of a private beta bug sub forum, then my tone might go from "I hope the dev's are making progress on the important things" to "I know they are guys, those of us that have seen the beta know it, just hang on till the next public build", it might also make their lives easier in terms of bug reports. I think I reported like 20 posts in the bug forum to the mods for merging into other larger threads about the same bugs, often earlier ones with clear video examples, where someone still posted a duplicate bug report... which is a situation that likely wont get better as new players filter in for the next couple of weeks based on paychecks, curiosity, job schedules, etc.

[Dakota]

5 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

From one former CM turned QA to another? You're doing a good job and yes, I mean that. I had some frustrations and some feedback and you are in here talking to us and I am really glad that you are. 

Appreciate it. I'm a bit new around these parts and, I'll be the first to admit, I'm still figuring out what works best and what doesn't. Each community expects different things communicated in different ways, and I'm grateful for y'alls patience.

Also shoutout to you for moving to QA, that's a job I could never do.

[RayneCloud]

We're here with you. We've got your back if you have ours. We're embarking on another grand adventure, together.  

[Kerbart]

2 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

A lot of what we've been doing since Friday is internal. (...) and much more I can't really talk about.

For a lot of people here that's totally understandable, but just because there's a lot you can't talk about doesn't mean you can't talk at all. It's not a secret that the reception of the game is... shall we call it, mixed?

Even a short message saying "we received your feedback. Our goal is to make you love the game as much as we do. Keep in mind that our first patch needs to make things better, not worse, so we want to ensure that what we roll out is well tested, but it might not be as quick as you want it to be. Having said that, we're busy categorizing your feedback, and prioritizing on what we can and need to fix first, and we will keep you updated on the progress we make." which really doesn't say anything most of us already know.suspect is better than total radio silence*. Did the entire team ship out for a three week sabbatical in Babados? For all we know, yes, because we're not told anything.

We won't eat you for "empty" messages like that, it means more to us on this side of the fence than you probably can imagine.

* But Discord! Yes, but for good reasons a lot of people here avoid Discord, and they shouldn't be forced to get official information from another channel than the official forum they've been using for years.

[Dakota]

3 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Did the entire team ship out for a three week sabbatical in Babados? For all we know, yes, because we're not told anything.

We won't eat you for "empty" messages like that, it means more to us on this side of the fence than you probably can imagine.

* But Discord! Yes, but for good reasons a lot of people here avoid Discord, and they shouldn't be forced to get official information from another channel than the official forum they've been using for years.

You know...a three week Barbados vacation does sound pretty good right now.... /s

We hear you - putting a bigger emphasis on communicating here in general moving forward.

[TechDragon]

Just now, PD_Dakota said:

Appreciate it. I'm a bit new around these parts and, I'll be the first to admit, I'm still figuring out what works best and what doesn't. Each community expects different things communicated in different ways, and I'm grateful for y'alls patience.

  If there's anything KSP players have, its patience... so so many thinks in KSP have been lessons in patience over the years

Nothing like being too low for time warp and having to wait for your polar orbit to circle round to where you need it to be for that high inclination Mun rescue because you don't have enough spare fuel to raise perigee and use time warp... its just time for a tea or coffee while you and the rescue Kerbals wait for the right moment.

Or running out of fuel on the way back to Kerbin, having just barely dipped into the atmosphere, and now its just patiently waiting orbit after orbit, each time time warping as fast as you can, but still having to wait for each dip into the atmosphere to happen at normal speed, until you finally aerobreak enough to re-enter and succeed at getting the mission home.

[whatsEJstandfor]

1 hour ago, TechDragon said:

I'm really not a fan of it myself, I feel its pointless... I don't need any more game specific accounts, its tedious, its a security liability to have yet another account with a password with other info in it, generally i just don't want these extra accounts and I'll continue to click the anonymous option and not bother as long as possible. Also I expect "skip the launcher" patches/mods will be extremely popular among the dedicated player base, unless they are planning to tie multiplayer or mods to it, I really think it was a waste, and if they are, then I really hope they rethink things, because... yuck... no thanks.

As a sidenote, I was able to skip creating an account, and I still don't have one despite using the launcher. Also, you can launch the KSP2_x64 executable directly, though this appears that it may cause Pumping Sim Once to hang in some cases.

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

As a sidenote, I was able to skip creating an account, and I still don't have one despite using the launcher. Also, you can launch the KSP2_x64 executable directly, though this appears that it may cause Pumping Sim Once to hang in some cases.

Quote

 

[TechDragon]

5 minutes ago, whatsEJstandfor said:

As a sidenote, I was able to skip creating an account, and I still don't have one despite using the launcher. Also, you can launch the KSP2_x64 executable directly, though this appears that it may cause Pumping Sim Once to hang in some cases.

Yeah, I did skip the account creation. What I meant by continuing to click the anonymous option, was that if it comes back after an update, I'll click it again and continue to click it whenever it appears. 

[NexustheNinja19]

Just now, TechDragon said:

Yeah, I did skip the account creation. What I meant by continuing to click the anonymous option, was that if it comes back after an update, I'll click it again and continue to click it whenever it appears. 

Honestly I just got the No launcher mod as soon as I got the game.

[regex]

12 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

We hear you - putting a bigger emphasis on communicating here in general moving forward.

That would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

[TLTay]

I feel slightly less crusty now that I've seen a real person respond.

[Moons]

55 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

We've seen a tremendous increase is discussion, requests, and players demanding our attention on other platforms - so we're figuring out the best way to make sure we have enough time in the day to respond to everyone on every platform. It's also just to figure out ways to make sure any information that comes out, for example the fact that the patch is not coming this week (something that was communicated on Discord on Saturday) is mirrored here in a simple way. But that isn't an announcement, it was just someone asking a question and we responded. All major announcements like patch notes and such are already planned to be mirrored, right now there's just a lot of small tidbits of information that have been shared on Twitter and Discord that haven't been mirrored here.

We agree with this - although I do think the Discord allows for a more immediate and human connection, which is why generally you'll see us just hanging out in there (plus the levity). That doesn't make the Forums any less important, in fact I do like the communication style here on the forums for the reasons above. It provides more in-depth conversations/feedback and generally steers away from the memery the Discord is known for.

Serious question:

Do you - and the team - really think Discord is worth it? Wouldnt it be better to reduce communication to platforms that are actually publicly visible to most people? In reality anything said at discord can never be found because google doesnt search trough discord - so lots of informations is just lost in the chaotic system that is discord and people interrested in the game also wont finde discord since its not public via search engines etc.

Twitter - mostly for news and statements (but to be honest i think twitter is useless these days since it seems to block users without login)

Forums - main way to communicate - it makes sense to use the Steam forums and the official forums here.

 

To be honest i think thats one of the main issues of public communication these days - there are just way too many platforms and you cant use all of them at once in a good way that doesnt require lots of work. I often wonder if it wouldnt make more sense to just use one form like a forum and simply link to said forum from ever other platform so people know where the main hub for information is.

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[radimov]

52 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

We agree with this - although I do think the Discord allows for a more immediate and human connection, which is why generally you'll see us just hanging out in there (plus the levity). That doesn't make the Forums any less important, in fact I do like the communication style here on the forums for the reasons above. It provides more in-depth conversations/feedback and generally steers away from the memery the Discord is known for.

I have tried to use discord but it is impossible to follow the thread because of the large volume of incoming messages, especially if English is not your native language, so I think many of us prefer the forums and Steam.

Talking about steam, have you thought about going there? That's where the biggest complainers are and it's hell trying to discuss about the game there.

[TheOtherDave]

3 minutes ago, Moons said:

Serious question:

Do you - and the team - really think Discord is worth it? Wouldnt it be better to reduce communication to platforms that are actually publicly visible to most people? In reality anything said at discord can never be found because google doesnt search trough discord - so lots of informations is just lost in the chaotic system that is discord and people interrested in the game also wont finde discord since its not public via search engines etc.

Twitter - mostly for news and statements (but to be honest i think twitter is useless these days since it seems to block users without login)

Forums - main way to communicate - it makes sense to use the Steam forums and the official forums here

AFAICT, Discord is just group texting for groups who don't want to share their phone numbers. I think that's why it so popular... it has that laid-back feel, and the fact that it isn't searchable means people don't necessarily have to feel so guarded all the time.

Of course, that also makes it objectively terrible for anything other than "group texting", but nobody wants to have to check multiple places so it gets used anyway.

[Kurtvw]

33 minutes ago, Dakota said:

We hear you - putting a bigger emphasis on communicating here in general moving forward.

IMHO, Discord is nothing more than a noise-box.  

You can't get anything done there as far as meaningful communication because it scrolls along and is gone, and the pinned messages, while useful are simply not as effective as a pinned forum thread.    Discord has its place, but that is for communication between players... Not as a format for support.

Community can't really exist if the content from the community managers is instantly scrolled off the screen because Jimmy was whining about FPS.   Community happens in the forums, where the discussion can be controlled and saved.

Glad to see you're switching gears a little.  A lot of people seriously can't stand discord.